Pak budget reflects its anxiety

Air Marshal RS Bedi (retd)
Former Director-General, Defence Planning Staff

Pakistan unveiled its national budget for the fiscal 2018-19 with a considerable hike in its defence allocation. It has been pegged at Pak Rs 1.1 trillion ($9.6 billion) which is tantamount to a whopping hike of 18 per cent over the previous year. This, perhaps, is the highest growth in Pakistan's defence budget in more than a decade. And this is when it does not include the pension bill. Increments in the past decade have remained in the region of 10 to 11 per cent. 

Pakistan's economy is not in a very good shape to sustain this type of spending on defence. US aid and support for helping operations in Afghanistan is fast drying up. Help from international organizations like the IMF and the World Bank etc dominated by the US may also not be easily forthcoming as hitherto. 

The security environment, both internal and the external, is a cause of serious concern. Declining internal security and periodic unrest and demands for secession in Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sind coupled with army's dominance over nation's executive and the judiciary leaves Pakistan in a state of deep turmoil and political instability. Currently, the relations between the government and the military brass are under severe strain. The country is also heading for the historic third General Election. How its fragile democratic process will unfold is not hard to visualise.

Externally, the situation is no better. In this era of shifting alliances, Pakistan's closest allies like the US, China and Russia are gradually inching towards India. The US has taken a tough stand against its long-term ally Pakistan for its failure to curb support to the terrorists operating in Afghanistan. China, too, has realised the significance of improving Sino-Indian relations as witnessed recently in Wuhan. All this has unnerved Pakistan. 

In pursuance of its obsession for weapons against India, the army seemed to have pushed its claim hard for higher grants for the armed forces which the lame duck civilian government was in no position to resist. The army's craze to continuously match India's rising military profile, despite the vast differences in their economies may prove detrimental in the long-term interest of Pakistan.

India's outlay for defence for the current fiscal at $63.9 billion which is merely 1.5 per cent of its GDP is more than six times larger than that of Pakistan. India's emergence as the world's fifth largest military spender in 2017, ahead of the UK, France and Germany is a fact that Pakistan can ill afford to overlook. With aids to Pakistan drying up, foreign exchange reserves fast dwindling and the economy in general not at its best, this match may not last very long. 

Unable to compete conventionally, Pakistan's reliance on nuclear weapons seems obvious. That's how the Pakistan navy got a much larger share of the budget this time, perhaps for the first time ever. It is not without reason that the navy got a hike of 21.4 per cent over the previous outlay in comparison to the army's 19.7 per cent and the air force's 19.5 per cent. Pakistan may be on its way to developing its second strike capability. It is trying hard to develop specific capabilities in order to retain a strategic edge over India.