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EDITORIAL: Welcome rethink on F-16s

President Pervez Musharraf has told the BBC that his government has decided to postpone the purchase of F-16 fighter planes — worth a couple of billion dollars — from the United States because Pakistan needs to focus on reconstruction in the wake of the biggest earthquake in its history. In all, 50 planes at up to $40 million each were on offer. The cost of reconstruction after the quake is estimated to be $5 billion. Pakistan, it should be noted, has just bought a billion dollars worth of Swedish radar-planes. The president made the announcement on the F-16 purchase after touring a US Army field hospital in Muzaffarabad, noting that the world had not responded adequately to the disaster. The United Nations is unhappy that only $130 million has been disbursed so far and that, because of paucity of funds, some relief efforts in the affected areas might have to be stopped.

President Musharraf observed, “I am going to postpone (purchase of F16s)... we want to bring maximum relief and reconstruction efforts.” The people of Pakistan will welcome this statement as will the world community, which might become less sceptical about Pakistan’s real intentions and might even start contributing more generously than it has so far. Foreign coverage of the calamity has emphasised the fact that India and Pakistan could have helped each other much more effectively had they not continued their conflictual postures. It has been noted that Pakistan refused Indian helicopters with Indian crews and India refused to lend them to Pakistan without them. There was also the brief exchange of dissonant phrases after terrorists hit New Delhi last week. Given this kind of international feeling, the postponement of weapons purchases by Pakistan comes at the right time.

The world has not contributed to Pakistan’s relief partly because there is “calamity fatigue”. This year saw the great tsunami in Asia to which the developed world responded handsomely, but the victim state, Indonesia, has not properly absorbed the aid that reached its shores. Almost $2.7 billion worth of it is lying unused in Banda Aceh after several months and the promised reconstruction has yet to start. Instead, Indonesia has become scared of foreigners and has given the NGOs a deadline to get out of the country. Ominously, Indonesian Islamist organisations like Hizbullah and Lashkar Mujahidin have literally taken over certain areas for their own kind of reconstruction. In light of this, Pakistan’s decision to rethink the F-16 option is clearly taken in the interest of the Pakistani nation.

Nations change their defence paradigms under the spur of extreme circumstances. And they are not always defeats. A state feels secure or insecure because of its environment. It has different sets of problems if it is located next to a more powerful state or a less powerful state. Its geography may actually confront it with both challenges. A stronger neighbour will project its power and that will have to be tackled; a weak neighbour may be subject to internal upheaval and that too may pose a threat. Pakistan is faced with both conditions. A status quo state will link its security to the retention of the balance of power in a steady equilibrium so that its geographic boundaries are not forcibly changed. An anti-status quo power will link its security to the desirability of changing the geographic boundaries of a neighbouring state.

The onus of forcibly changing the geographic boundaries of another state places more strain on the state than when it is obliged only to preserve its boundaries. The military preparedness of an anti-status quo state has to be more offensive than defensive, or its defensive posture has to contain elements of “offence” to a degree that it is able to challenge the status quo state. The security of an anti-status quo or “revisionist” state is complicated by the condition of it being weak vis à vis the state it is obliged to challenge. Therefore the strain on its resources can be intolerable, leading to internal instability. Chances are that such a state will be permanently unstable, especially if the state it seeks to challenge remains free of internal contradictions or overcomes them and progresses satisfactorily with its economy. This is what Pakistan faces as the region’s “revisionist” state.

Geo-strategy, a favourite with military institutions because of its “fixity”, too is seen differently in the civilian framework. A “strategically thin” territory may require “strategic depth”, but this thinness can be an asset if the state gives up its “revisionist” posturing and becomes a transit territory and a trading hub. Much of this new thinking has been unleashed in a nuclear-armed Pakistan by President Musharraf’s own trade-oriented policies in the region. Pakistan has 73,000 dead in the earthquake so far. There are cities and 15,000 villages to reconstruct. Whether we like it or not, Pakistan is not going to be the same again. Isn’t it time also to make the paradigm shift in our national security and defence strategy? *

EDITORIAL #2: Ominous rioting in France

After 10 days, arson and rioting have not stopped in the suburbs of Paris and other cities in France. Only on Saturday more than 900 vehicles were set on fire, as incidents were reported in Nice, Lille, Marseille and Dijon as well as in the greater Paris area. It all began after teenagers Bouna Traore, aged 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity sub-station in Clichy-sous-Bois, near Paris. The rioters are immigrants from Africa, but most of them are Muslim, the largest expatriate community in the country (5 million) living in extremely poor conditions.

Europe is moving towards tough anti-terrorist laws which will make it possible to detain people for 90 days without charge (as against 14 today) and to deport them if it can be proved that they were “inciting” terrorist acts. But the fact is that what Europe faces today is born out of its own neglect of its ghettoised foreign workers’ community. However, the Muslims should be worried by the fact that they are less “integrated” culturally than the expatriates of other faiths in Europe. Therefore, as European politics changes for the worse, the onus of a change of lifestyle is as much on the leaders of the Muslims as it is on the leaders of a secular Europe. *

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