New Delhi: With a promise to put economic security at the heart of its security strategy, Pakistan unveiled its first-ever National Security Policy on Friday. To long-standing Indian observers, the references to India in the unclassified version did not spring any surprises or mark a deviation from traditional Pakistani policy.
At a special ceremony on Friday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan released the document, highlighting its key argument. “An inclusive development was inevitable for national security,” he said.
He echoed the declaration in the ‘National Security policy of Pakistan 2022-26’ that “Pakistan’s vital national security interests are best served by placing economic security as the core element of national security”. The document is the unclassified 62-page version titled “.
Divided into eight chapters, the unclassified 62-page version bats for a “geo-economic vision to supplement the focus on geo-strategy, and recognises that sustainable and inclusive economic growth is needed to expand our national resource pie”.
India gets a dozen mentions in the document, probably more than any other country.
In the section about defence and territorial integrity, the report stated that “special attention is required to manage lingering border disputes which continue to pose security threats, particularly along the Line of Control and Working Boundary where ceasefire violations by India threaten civilian lives and property while endangering regional stability”.
Under a sub-heading about strategic stability, the report notes that nuclear deterrence has a “critical role” in South Asia’s security calculations. “Pakistan’s nuclear capability deters war through full spectrum deterrence within the precincts of credible minimum nuclear deterrence in concert with our conventional military capabilities and all elements of national power,” said the report.
It further claims that Pakistan’s deterrence regime is “aimed at regional peace”. “The expansion of India’s nuclear triad, open-ended statements on nuclear policy, and investments in and introduction of destabilising technologies disturb the strategic balance in the region”.
In another part of the report, the policy document asserts that Pakistan is concerned by “growing Indian arms build-up, facilitated by access to advanced technologies and exceptions in the non-proliferation rules”. It is a reference to the 2008 exemption granted to India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group as a result of the India-US nuclear deal, which has been consistently criticised by Pakistan.
“Besides impacting regional stability, such policies of exceptionalism also undermine the global non-proliferation regime.”
According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the nuclear weapon inventory of both the nuclear powers in South Asia had increased in 2021. As per the Swedish think tank’s annual report, Pakistan had 165 warheads, while India was estimated to have 156 last year.
Also read: Married Across an Intractable Border: Rajput Sodhas in Pakistan Plead for Indian Visas
India-Pakistan relations
On relations with India, the document stated that Pakistan wants to “improve relationship with India” but adds that a “just and peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute remains at the core of the bilateral relationship”.
The NSP also reiterated Pakistan’s stance on the dilution of Article 370 of the Indian constitution related to the autonomous status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. “India’s pursuit of unilateral policy actions on outstanding issues are attempts to impose one-sided solutions that can have far reaching negative consequences for regional stability.”
Former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, Sharat Sabharwal, observed that the observations on Kashmir in NSP show that it has not changed its position. “Pakistan has always said that it is willing to have good relations with India but on the condition of Kashmir resolution. This discourse has always been there. So it is nothing new,” said the veteran diplomat who was posted in Islamabad from 2009 to 2013.
There was also a separate section on Kashmir, where the policy document reiterated Pakistan’s traditional position.
“But, what do they want precisely on Kashmir? If they are talking of a return to statehood. Technically, even the Indian government has said that same thing. Pakistan never had the courage to take forward the understandings reached in back channels between 2004 and 2007,” he said. Sabharwal was referring to the back-channel discussions between the two countries, in which both sides were talking about open borders without any exchange of territory.
The NSP also claims that Pakistan’s immediate security is impacted by the “rise of Hindutva-driven politics in India”. “The political exploitation of a policy of belligerence towards Pakistan by India’s leadership has led to the threat of military adventurism and non-contact warfare to our immediate east,” the document stated. This is also not a new statement from Pakistan, with the Pakistani leadership constantly referring to the RSS and Hindutva hardliners when criticising the Indian government in public.
Earlier this week, Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune published an article citing a background briefing for reporters ahead of the document’s launch. It quoted officials claiming that the policy document “leaves the door open for trade and business ties with India without final settlement of the long-standing Kashmir dispute provided there is progress in the talks between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
But, the language related to India in the unclassified document makes no such concessions.
Also read: A Diplomatic Narrative of the 1971 War
Trade ties
There is no reference to trade ties with India. The only place where India was mentioned in proximity to economic issues was about Pakistan’s location and connectivity.
“Pakistan’s prized geo-economic location provides a unique opportunity through north-south and east-west connectivity for South and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa,” it said.
Further, the document indicated that “westward connectivity” was the current viable option as “eastward connectivity is held hostage to India’s regressive approach”.
The ‘geo-economic’ centric discourse in Pakistan’s foreign policy had begun last year following the speech by the Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa in March. General Bajwa had also repeatedly asserted that the country intends to leverage its “vital geo-strategic location.”
According to TCA Raghavan, India’s high commissioner to Islamabad from 2013 to 2015, Pakistan has always been “kind of hyping up Pakistan’s geo-strategic location as something very significant”.
“That itself is a questionable point. The Army has internalised this claim so much that they put an exaggerated weight on this point,” he said.
Raghavan pointed out that Pakistan had never understood that for India, trade relationship was more of a “confidence-building measure” rather than a necessity to tap into a market.
“India does not need Pakistan economically. No top Indian firms are rushing to Pakistan for investment when they have a six times bigger market in India. The Pakistan establishment never understood that and felt that its location was such a plus that it could be a point of leverage.”
Echoing Raghavan, Sabharwal also reiterated that Pakistan by “itself can’t be a transit point”. “It has to be connected to the east,” he said.
He also pointed out that when it comes to SAARC, Pakistan had solely blocked the draft motor vehicle agreement “that would have allowed for road connectivity across the region”.
Sabharwal also noted that Pakistan’s discourse about the need to boost trade ties with India is a recurring theme from the past. “Again, this is not a new thing. When I was high commissioner, India and Pakistan had agreed on a road map for trade normalisation, which was to have concluded with a grant of MFN [most-favoured-nation] status by the end of 2012.”
But, Pakistan had pulled the plug on the initiative. “For a number of reasons, it never happened. Nawaz Sharif government came and decided that since the UPA government was going, they would instead do it with the next one. But, when Prime Minister Modi came, they tried different things, but relations have only gone down,” he reminded.
Also read: It’s Time We Debated What Needs to Be Done to Eliminate the Threat of a Two Front War
‘Internal security’
In the section about internal security, the NSP stated that extremism and radicalisation based on ethnicity or religion challenges society. It asserted that “swift and uncompromising” action would be taken against those producing and disseminating hate speech and material.
Nevertheless, both the former Indian envoys were not impressed with the formulation.
“On internal security in extremism and sectarianism, there is no acknowledgement that it has grown through state patronage,” said Sabharwal. “Religious extremists have been used by the army for electoral engineering and other purposes, including for terrorism as an instrument of state policy,” he added.
Last November, the Army mediated in the Imran Khan government reaching a deal with the banned extremist group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP).
Raghavan also stated that there was “insufficient acknowledgement of Pakistan’s own interface with these extremist groups in advancing what are seen as strategic interests vis-à-vis India and Afghanistan”.
“This had been implicitly accepted till now at least occasionally, but there is no sign of it here, which is regressive,” he added.
On the utility of NSP, the retired Indian Foreign Service officer said these documents have value as the drafting process requires knocking heads together of different departments and stakeholders and, therefore, building up a national consensus. “But, the present document comes across as more of a part academic and part bureaucratic exercise – almost like the output of a think tank. There does not seem to have been any political input into it, which is an obvious and major weakness,” he observed.
Sabharwal was also dismissive of the significance of the NSP in understanding Pakistan’s security posture. “This document is primarily [released] to quell the domestic criticism over the arm garnering more resources by claiming that the government has a broader picture of ‘comprehensive’ security. It is aimed at the internal audience and external actors who may be taken in by the platitudes,” he said.
One positive argument for the policy document, stated Raghavan, was that it did not centre Pakistan’s “national security around India alone and takes a wider view of national security including in it non-traditional elements”.
