There is no denying the fact that India poses a grave and enduring threat to Pakistan’s security and economic well-being.
This threat, which has taken various forms since Pakistan’s independence in 1947, stems from political, strategic, economic and civilisational factors. It is in Pakistan’s interest to understand the enduring nature of this threat and formulate a long-term India policy to safeguard Pakistan’s vital interests. Unfortunately, Pakistan has instead relied upon short-term measures and tactical manoeuvres to counter India’s long-term threat.
History reveals that Pakistan came into being in the teeth of the Hindu opposition led by the Indian National Congress. Although the Congress finally acquiesced to the demand for Pakistan, India, since Partition, has never missed a chance to destabilise and weaken Pakistan. Its refusal to settle the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions, its invasion of East Pakistan in 1971 leading to Pakistan’s dismemberment, its suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty in 2025, and its current campaign to foment terrorism in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to destabilise Pakistan are ready examples of India’s anti-Pakistan political bias and the security threat posed by it.
The growing sway of Hindutva or Hindu extremism in India has undeniably led to increased persecution of Indian Muslims and, thus, indirectly justified the creation of Pakistan. It has also caused increased bitterness and acrimony in Pakistan-India relations and made the peaceful resolution of Pakistan-India disputes, especially those relating to Kashmir and the Indus Waters Treaty, that much more difficult. A close look at the trends in the Indian body politic shows that Hindu extremism is likely to increase in the years to come, thus further aggravating tensions between Pakistan and India.
India’s quest for hegemony in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, asserted by Indian scholars from time to time and recognised by reputable foreign experts on international politics like Kissinger and Brzezinski, aims to bring states in these regions within India’s sphere of influence. In the words of noted Indian security analyst C Raja Mohan, “India has sought primacy and a veto over the actions of outside powers” in its immediate neighbourhood – South Asia.
Islamabad’s acquiescence to these designs would reduce it to the status of India’s satellite, enabling New Delhi to exploit our vulnerabilities and promote India’s interests at the expense of those of Pakistan. While it is in India’s interest to establish its hegemony in its immediate neighbourhood, it is patently not in Pakistan’s interest to allow it to do so. This clash of strategic interests is the main cause of long-term tensions and enmity between Pakistan and India.
Finally, India and Pakistan represent two different ways of life and civilisations. As Samuel Huntington predicted in his widely acclaimed book ‘The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order’, these civilisational differences carry the seeds of a long-term confrontation between Pakistan, representing the Islamic civilisation, and India, essentially representing the Hindu civilisation. The growing sway of Hindutva in India and its hegemonic designs in South Asia will only aggravate the civilisational tensions between the two countries.
The enduring nature of the threat posed by India to Pakistan’s vital national interests, with its political, economic, security and diplomatic challenges, demands a long-term grand strategy on the part of Pakistan to counter it effectively. Such a grand strategy should synthesise Pakistan’s political, economic, security, and diplomatic policies into a coherent whole to check India’s hegemonic ambitions in the region and its efforts to destabilise and weaken Pakistan.
Unfortunately, Islamabad instead relied on short-term, impulsive, and ill-advised policies that reflected a flawed understanding of the grave Indian threat and lacked the cross-dimensional balance of grand strategy needed to overcome it, leading to predictable, disastrous results. These factors were responsible for the strategic stalemate in the 1965 war, the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971, Pakistan’s disastrous Kashmir policy of the 1990s whose aftereffects continue to haunt us, and the Kargil debacle. The need of the hour is to draw necessary lessons from our past experiences while formulating Pakistan’s future grand strategy.
The people of Pakistan have every right to celebrate the victory of our armed forces, especially our air force, over the Indian armed forces in the military skirmishes in May last year. Maintaining an effective security deterrent and, if it fails, the military strength to defeat any military adventure by India should remain an indispensable pillar of Pakistan’s grand strategy. But this is not enough in a long-term contest between nations, where victory also demands political stability, proactive diplomacy, and economic, scientific and technological strength.
As Paul Kennedy elaborated in his masterpiece ‘The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers’, in the modern world the result of any long-term contest between nations was invariably dictated by the balance of economic and technological power, with the victory going in favour of the nation which enjoyed advantage over its opponent in economic and technological strength.
Unfortunately, economic weakness is currently Pakistan’s Achilles’ heel. India’s current GDP is estimated at $4.15 trillion, compared with only $452 billion for Pakistan in nominal dollar terms. India’s GDP is currently growing at about 7.0 per cent per annum, compared with only 3.7 per cent per annum for Pakistan. This means India not only enjoys an overwhelming economic advantage over Pakistan, but that advantage is also likely to grow over time.
This is bad news for Pakistan’s long-term grand strategy to counter the threat posed by India. Pakistan should adopt far-reaching economic reforms to raise its annual GDP growth rate to over 7.0 per cent at least to have any chance of success in its long-term contest with India. It should also prioritise promoting science and technology in the country.
Unfortunately, there are few signs of the required policy reforms. While maintaining a credible security deterrent and continuing our principled positions on outstanding Pakistan-India disputes, Pakistan should avoid high-risk policies like our Kashmir policy of the 1990s and military adventurism as reflected by the Kargil operation. Needless to add that the strengthening of Pakistan’s strategic cooperation with China and the promotion of peace and cooperation in the Middle East and West Asia should be indispensable elements of our long-term India policy.
The writer is a retired ambassador and author of ‘Pakistan and a World in Disorder – A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century’. He can be reached at: javid.husain@gmail.com