This is the first of a two-part series detailing National Security Policy’s (NSP) foreign policy’s focus on economic diplomacy – a focus that is a challenge as the world moves from unipolarity to multipolarity; part II will highlight the challenges of a multipolar world for Pakistan.
On 14 January 2020 the then Prime Minister Imran Khan launched the first ever National Security Policy (2022-26) amidst much fanfare, with the architect of the document, the then national security advisor Moeed Yousuf, claiming that the document was finalized after “full civilian and military consensus” (a reflection of the then prevailing same page mantra) with military capability remaining focused on peace and stability in the region and beyond while the foreign policy objective was to focus more on economic diplomacy going forward.
The document further noted that “Pakistan’s future lies in embracing change and breaking the inertia of status-quo in a world that is undergoing fundamental transformation,” but these transformations were not identified which led to markedly similar prescriptions to those enunciated by previous governments (though they were never implemented successfully): “strengthening traditional and non-traditional security, transfer dividends of a strong economy to further strengthen our human security, defence and diplomacy, and take advantage of geo-economically pivotal location to operate as a production, trade and investment, and connectivity hub for our wider region.”
On a scale of 1 to 10 these objectives remain largely unmet to this day as the country struggles to deal with increasing terror attacks that are not only undermining our connectivity within the region but trade and investment inflows as well (which remain contingent on transforming the memoranda of understanding with friendly countries indicative of intent into binding contracts) while the economy is even more fragile today than it was in 2020.
Nine years before the NSP was released — in 2011 — Barry Posen, a professor at the prestigious MIT, argued that unipolarity was on the wane and the international world order was shifting towards multipolarity. That year China’s GDP was 7.5 trillion dollars against double that of the USA at 15.6 trillion dollars with per capita income in China at 5617 dollars against USAs 12,681 dollars.
Posen’s prognosis was no doubt based on the fact that China would soon catch up as it was registering a growth of 9.6 percent as opposed to USA’s growth of 1.56 percent. He was proved right and by 2019 the GDP gap between China and the USA further narrowed with the former registering 14.28 trillion dollars against USA’s 21.57 trillion dollars.
That same year, 2019, in the issue of International Security dated 1 April 2019 John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at University of Chicago, wrote that “the coming of unipolarity in the wake of the Cold War allowed the victorious West—with the United States taking the lead—to begin building a truly liberal international order.
The hope was that it would act as a handmaiden for a peaceful and prosperous world.….starting around 2005, the order began to encounter serious problems, which have multiplied with time, to the point where it has begun to collapse. This outcome should have been foreseen, as the order had within it the seeds of its own destruction and thus was destined to fail sooner rather than later…. The attempt by the United States and its allies to create a liberal international order faced three main problems.
First, it required the so-called liberal states in the system, especially the United States, to pursue a highly revisionist and wildly ambitious policy of regime change that was almost certain to fail in an era in which nationalism, with its emphasis on sovereignty and self-determination, remains a remarkably powerful force.
The policy was also stymied by balance of power politics at both the global and regional levels. Second, by pushing for the free movement of people across borders and the delegation of substantial decision-making authority to international institutions, the expanding liberal order caused significant political problems inside the so-called liberal states themselves.
The results often clashed with beliefs about national identity and sovereignty, which matter greatly to most citizens in modern nation-states.
Third, although some people and countries benefited from hyper globalization, it ultimately caused major economic and political problems inside the liberal democracies, which eventually led to a serious erosion of support for the so-called liberal international order.
At the same time, the economic dynamism that comes with hyper globalization helped China rapidly turn itself into a great power at roughly the same time Russia was re-establishing itself as a great power. That shift in the global balance of power put an end to unipolarity, which is a prerequisite for a liberal world order.”
Soon after the Russian-Ukraine war on 22 February 2022 Hina Rabbani Khar, as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, stated dismissively “Pakistan has enough problems of its own and does not want the headache of a new Cold War between China and the United States.”
Ishaq Dar, the incumbent foreign minister, a novice in this critical field, stated inanely on 25 June 2024 at the fifty-first anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad that the “guiding principle of Pakistan’s foreign policy is to enhance Pakistan’s diplomatic space and autonomy of action including through good relations with all major powers, especially the United States, China, Russia, EU, Japan, and ASEAN — as forging closer ties is crucial for navigating today’s complex world.”
Today the country’s foreign policy is focused on proactively luring foreign investment from friendly countries (though nearly all pledges have yet to be transformed into binding contracts while struggling to provide foolproof security to foreign investors and, finally, with foreign exchange reserves being mainly debt based the government has been unable to allow full repatriation of profits and delay imports of inputs to existing productive sectors.
To conclude, multipolarity has raised two critical issues for Pakistan that were bafflingly not addressed in the NPS: (i) China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects penned in 2015 (five years before the policy) were criticized by the US led Western countries and multilaterals as being debt enhancing and later as not giving a level playing field to Western companies – a criticism that continues to this day; and (ii) Pakistan’s heavy dependence on debt from the US led Western countries and multilaterals made choosing sides in a multipolar world a serious challenge.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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