This question has elicited different answers from different experts each looking at the issue from a limited prism. A new but more honest appraisal has come from a commentator, who sees the military domination of Pakistan’s security discourse to the exclusion of all other stake holders as the problem afflicting the nation founded by constitutionalist Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Writing in Karachi daily, The News International, Islamabad –based columnist, Dr Farrukh Saleem has put the blame on the army. Pakistan, he says, feels ‘insecure, vulnerable, uncertain and unsafe’ because ‘National Security Strategy (NSS) is uni-dimensional and uni-organizational’.  He adds: ‘For us, national security’s only dimension is the military one and GHQ is the only organisation that defines it’.

How true it is?

Security has long ceased to be focused on the borders or the N-bombs in the basement that matters. It today encompasses economy, food, health, and environment besides areas like personal security, community security and political security. Just as mere political independence makes no sense to a nation without economic freedom, national security is meaningless unless it covers the above mentioned seven broad parameters that make life secure and comfortable.

On this yardstick, Pakistan scores poorly and the leadership – both present and the past has paid no attention to any area other than military might in an obvious race to catch up with its big brother neighbour. It ignored the reality that the neighbour has long borders, large population and big concerns. And glossed over the reality that it is no match to the neighbour’s economic fundamentals, and democracy quotient.

American and Canadian egg heads and military experts, after a brain storming session in 2006, concluded that the 21st century demands a multi-dimensional and multi-organisational approach to deal effectively with the contemporary global security reality.” It means that time honoured concepts of national security and the classical military means to which Pakistan is firmly wedded because of the fixation of the Rawalpindi Shura, no longer provide the capability to stand up and be counted.

The problem with Pakistan’s army is its megalomania where power is concerned and reluctance to allow the civilian executive to become a little more than a figure head. Gen Musharraf symbolized the mindset by wearing three crowns at the same time and repeatedly asserting that he would usher in a Pakistani variant of democracy, what ever it may mean in the end. His successor and also his predecessor subscribed to the same theory though they did not go public as motor mouths.

The point, as Dr Saleem makes in his highly readable column, is Pakistan needs a new paradigm in matters security and it is no where in sight.  The National Security Strategy (NSS) must be based on the 3-Ds – defence, development, and diplomacy.

Military might is essential no doubt but it is only one component, though an important one. Nothing more nothing less. A country must come to grips with its very own economic reality and work on improving its economic fundamentals, while putting the best foot forward by stepping up outlays on development as a percentage of GDP.  Once this rejig is done on the home front, diplomacy helps since today diplomacy is as much political as economic at its core.  

Where does Pakistan stand vis-à-vis the new strategy demands of the day?

Dr Saleem offers an interesting response though a bit long winded. He says Pakistan is in the midst of ‘fourth generation warfare’, a doctrine which was first defined by William Lind in his ‘Manoeuvre Warfare Handbook’. This is warfare’s return to a ‘decentralised form’ whereby a ‘nation-state has lost its near-monopoly’ on combat forces”.

Pakistan’s fourth generation warfare is unfolding at three different levels: physical combat; mental combat and moral combat, he adds and makes no bones about his concern over what he calls a major conflict going on within Pakistan. This conflict is “characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian.”

Any student of Pakistan scene will find it difficult to disagree with one particular observation of the Pakistan scholar. “Violent Non-State Actors (VNSA) are acting in informal alliances and have two common objectives – to de-legitimize the state; and to make the state expend manpower”, he avers.

Yes. Survival of Pakistan as a nation state will not depend on its army. Neither defence preparedness nor the N-bomb guarantee Pakistan’s survival, and its orderly growth. The upheavals Pakistan is passing through in the past five-six months with energy crisis gripping the nation of 18 million and near empty treasury highlight the urgency for Pakistan to look beyond the immediate and embrace a new paradigm.

Neither overt military rule which the Zias and Musharrafs ensured nor covert operations during democratic rule which the Begs and Kayanis practice invoking the national security mantra offer manna for Pakistan.  The land of the pure must first unlearn what it has learnt or was forced to learn as a nation to needle it’s neighbour – yes, it cannot do no more than needle it’s neighbour as the history bears witness from Siachen to Kargil and from Poonch to Kutch.  If it does this reality check, then and then only, Pakistan can hope to march forward with its 3-Ds.