Pakistan's National Security Policy: a self-deceiving hope for South Asia's regional strategic stability

 

In this article Salomé Rosa argues that, despite being path-breaking, Pakistan's first National Security Policy (NSP) is raising false hopes towards the Indo-Pakistani relationship, acting instead as a sideline to the enduring problems of South Asia's regional strategic instability.

On 28th December 2021, Pakistan's federal cabinet approved its National Security Policy (NSP) for 2022-2026, establishing the country’s first-ever written document with guidelines to achieve national security goals. The policy, publicly released by Prime Minister Imran Khan during the 36th National Security Council meeting, displays a clear paradigm shift in the security rationale, raising expectations for a potential improvement in the relationship with its main strategic opponent – India.

Whereas previously the focus was on traditional security, now the approach anchors on the symbiotic relationship between internal security and a foreign policy that values economic development, choosing to achieve the latter through regional connectivity and shared prosperity. In a holistic view, there is a transition from geostrategy to geoeconomics, recognizing the African and Euroasian markets as a possible avenue for changing Pakistan's reputation in the eyes of the international community, as a more economically responsible state. In this sense, the economic doctrine entails investment in projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the so-called “China Pakistan Economic Corridor” (CPEC), to which India opposes based on geostrategic grounds.

Given this, it is in the fifth and seventh sections of Pakistan's NSP – "Defense and Territorial Integrity" and “Foreign Policy in a Changing World” – that regional security in general, and Pakistan's national security in particular, are addressed. The document is explicit in the recognition of the main challenges faced by the country (namely conventional military threats) while distinguishing, for the first time, the five warfare domains in which Pakistan is prepared to act: land, air, sea, cyberspace, and space. Hybrid warfare also receives a remark, as an area where a nation-wide approach is required, taking into account India’s investment in a variety of disruptive technologies. These acknowledgments highlight the strength to uphold a strategic balance in the region, alongside the recognition of the Indian Ocean as a contested and recently nuclearized area due to the Indian triad and both India's and Pakistan’s efforts towards nuclear and conventional modernization, as part of a “continuous-at-sea deterrence” (CASD).

Regarding bilateral relations with India, nothing issued in the NSP is new or in practice binding. It states that “Pakistan, under its policy of peace at home and abroad, wishes to improve its relationship with India. A just and peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute remains at the core of our bilateral relationship” (p.37). However, despite the intention, the country's stance does not seem sufficient to reassure the status quo. The document remains silent on substantial nuclear confidence-building measures (CBMs) and risk reduction measures, an approach that in recent years has proven to be essential in order to deal with the fragile political-diplomatic context, where cooperation is undermined by the high degree of mutual disbelief and the prolonged absence of dialogue mechanisms. For these and other reasons, South Asia has been the stage of a regional arms race, where the lack of commitment and the ambiguity of nuclear doctrines have been leading to cycles of action-reaction that destabilize its strategic reality.

Both countries became nuclear-armed states upon the testing of weapons in 1998, having since conducted a series of conflicts generally correlated to the district of Kashmir, which the two nations proclaim. While India’s motivation for becoming nuclear was to deter a nuclear-armed China, Pakistan’s aim was to equilibrate the regional balance of power and sustain its sovereignty, so as to avoid a conventionally inferior military position vis-à-vis India. In this sense, the 2001-02 military stand-off generated a change in the doctrinal thinking of both states, with India adopting an aggressive doctrine of limited warfare (the "Cold Start") and claiming to maintain a credible minimum deterrence (CMD), along with the implementation of a Non-First Use (NFU) policy, currently undergoing withdrawal. On Pakistan’s side, it was implemented a posture of Full-Spectrum Deterrence (FSD), allowing India to pursue limited war scenarios in case they approach the nuclear threshold.

Nevertheless, India's attempts to deal with a "two-front war" (China-Pakistan) do not equate to a “minimum” doctrine, also disconnected from the threat perception derived from the ballistic-missile developments and the defense expenditure. This courts an action-reaction dynamic with Pakistan, and by not falling under the umbrella of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), both India and Pakistan can capitalize on global norms in order to manage certain freedom of action, which has translated into a pattern of hostility and security interdependence on the edge of a possible nuclear escalation.

Viewed in this way, despite being path-breaking and focusing on key issues for Pakistan’s development, the foreign policy approach centered on geoeconomics does not seem to bring an improvement in Indo-Pakistan bilateral relations, as many expect, partly because the economic bet involves projects in which India does not review itself and also because it does not provide a reliable answer to the ambiguity of the strategic scenario. Added to this, although it is an outstanding agenda, the NSP does not introduce practical guidelines for the implementation of the goals to which it subscribes, running the risk that many may not get beyond the paper.

Salomé Rosa, nº227712, Laboratório II: Análise de Política Externa