Opinion The national interest trap
If the Pakistani state really cared for its people, it would put the national economy above all else
Last month, days before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was to take off for his meeting with US President Barack Obama, National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz signalled that “there will be no compromise on national interests during the talks”. He explained his concern further: “Our main priority is to protect national interest and security, and we will not compromise on this.” You don’t have to read tea leaves to know that he was referring to Pakistan’s nukes. What he expressed was in fact misplaced fear; Obama didn’t challenge Pakistan on its nukes.
Why should one worry about “protecting” something before engaging an old ally in talks? Why club “security” and “national interest” together? Clearly, there’s an effort to “define” national interest, which is definitely not Pakistan’s economy or trade with America, but something tied to Pakistan’s defence (nuclear preparedness) and an obsession with strategy. If you were living in the EU, you’d say national interest is nothing but the national economy; if you were in Pakistan, you’d think mostly about India.
But national interest remains an exasperatingly vague term to express “national consensus”, the kind that the country’s PM can’t even dream of glossing over. If you ask a cleric in Pakistan, he’d say Islam is the paramount national interest; if you ask an army officer, he’d say “strike capability” over India as deterrence, and a bigger nuclear arsenal to prevent India from attacking with its superior conventional force. Freezing national thinking like this exposes the state to instability. What if India spends a huge sum of money on defence? And Pakistan can’t match it? Can self-impoverishment through nukes be the “national interest”?
The idea is buried under layers of textbook jingoism about “the enemy at the border”. Leaders will say, “We will eat grass but we will not accept slavery.” But whenever the economy wobbles because of military adventures, the people refuse to “eat grass”, despite the pledges earlier made by them. In any case, “national interest” is a dodge.
Pakistan’s Canada-based ex-ambassador Muhammad Yunus, in his book Foreign Policy: A Theoretical Introduction (2003) tells us how different scholars have avoided theorising about “national interest”. He quotes Raymond Aron as saying, “It is a formula vague to the point of being meaningless or a pseudo-theory”. The truth is that if your national interest is expanding your nuclear arsenal, and in doing so you can’t hold the national economy together, the “nation” soon forgets its “consensus” on eating grass.
After 9/11, the Americans thought a war was required. They opted for national sacrifice and elected President George W. Bush twice, allowing him to attack Iraq after Afghanistan. But when the economy suffered after trillions of dollars were thrown at “sorting out” the Middle East, Americans forgot about the Republican “national interest” and plumped for the Democrats. Obama’s first speech in the Middle East was so good they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize, but it’s precisely the region he has avoided looking at closely. Reason? The economy back home.
An economically troubled EU is also trying to ignore the war in Syria, where its migrants are coming from. Maybe the only “national interest” is the national economy? Talking of national interest, Pakistan should absorb its new lesson from London as it allows China to invest in its nuclear power stations: China is set to invest over £100 billion in the UK’s infrastructure by 2025. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, committed $62 billion last month in a nuclear facility coming up there, even as the UK’s all-weather ally, America, challenged China in the South China Sea.
Nothing works if the national economy is dysfunctional. Unless, like North Korea, you let the people die and keep the threat of nuclear war alive. And the national economy, since it’s more globalised today than ever, requires peaceful relations in the neighbourhood. Not that the national economy strips you of the ability to project power; only, the power you project as an economic hegemon is more persuasive than the military arsenals cutting into living standards. India elected Narendra Modi clearly with the economy in mind.
The world has effectively surrendered Africa to China, and partly to India, without feeling threatened in the traditional sense. In old times, such economic muscle would have triggered aggressive responses from rival powers, but not today. Yet, the hegemon has to have enough financial clout to revive your economy through the kind of investment you simply can’t get from anywhere else.
An former BJP foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha — who was earlier also India’s finance minister — used to tell Pakistan how it could learn from India’s forsaking of its “revisionism” against China to benefit from trade and investment. As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi actually got “enemy” China to invest in his state, ignoring India’s case on Aksai Chin and the McMahon Line. Without talking too much about it, India has mothballed its territorial disputes with China. It’s clear that Pakistan’s PM, too, wants to identify “national interest” with the national economy by seeking to “normalise” trade with India.
Sooner or later, South Asia will start behaving like the EU and the market states of Southeast Asia, where the national economy is the only national interest worth looking after. In Pakistan, the state will be transformed if it starts putting the national economy above the pseudo-theory of national interest attached to military strategies of “defence”.
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