Fair Argues Pakistan is “an Army with a Country”

In a public lecture at the Center for Conflict, Negotiation and Recovery (CCNR) on March 27, C. Christine Fair discussed key findings from her recent book, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War. Fair argued that Pakistan is an ideological state rather than one which is motivated primarily by security concerns. She argued that this distinction has several policy implications for Pakistan's preferred policies and approaches to prosecute them and for major foreign actors like the United States, which seeks to influence Pakistan's behaviors.

Outlining the history of Pakistan and its relationship with India, Fair highlighted the role of Pakistan's army in dominating the state and key foreign and domestic policies. Pakistan, she explained, was born in 1947 as an insecure state as the result of an "inherently unfair partition process" that left the country with the most dangerous frontiers of the former British Raj with meagre resources to manage them. In addition to these lingering real and other imagined problems tied to partition, Pakistan's founding ideology, Two Nation Theory, has contributed to regional insecurity. While Muslim political elites originally used the Two Nation Theory to argue that Hindus and Muslims are equal nations and thus should have equal representation in a united Indian federal parliament, proponents of a separate Muslim states used the concept to argue that Muslim could not live with dignity in a united India dominated by Hindus. The communalizing of identity in the months before the partition led to sanguinary violence whereby Sikhs and Hindus sought to drive Muslims from territories that would be "Indian" and whereby Muslims did the same to non-Muslims in lands to be "Pakistani."

This ideology coupled with Pakistan's experiences with partition has enabled the army to characterize its rivalry with India in civilizational terms that pits "Muslim Pakistan" against a "Hindu" enemy. . The army, she said, has exploited this situation to portray itself as the sole institution capable of protecting people against this existential threat and in turn perpetually protect its corporate self-interests and its arrogated role of running the state when it deems necessary.

Based on data from over six decades of Pakistani professional military writings, Fair argued that Pakistan pursues its revisionist agenda with India mostly for ideological rather than security-motivated reason. She cited the work of Charles Glaser, noting that an ideological state" is fundamentally dissatisfied with the status quo, desiring additional territory even when it is not required for security reasons." She argued that perfectly describes Pakistan. She noted, by way of evidence for this claim, that writers in Pakistani military journals, mobilized the Two Nation Theory and other aspects of the ideology of Pakistan principle justifications for its fight to secure all of Kashmir, the only Muslim dominant state in India. These journals make no security-related arguments for acquiring this territory.

Fair explained that Pakistan is "persistently revisionist," in which it constantly seeks to change the territorial status quo in Kashmir but also to reverse India's ascendance as an extra-regional and even aspiring global power. With a combination of direct and indirect army rule and an ideological strategic culture, Pakistan pursues aggressive policies in South Asia to the detriment of its citizenry who, because they have been socialized in this strategic culture, generally accept the army's role and preferences. If Pakistan and the army that runs it had any pragmatic motives, Fair hypothesized that it would encourage Pakistan's civilians to pursue beneficial initiatives such as economic normalization with India. However, the army undermines all efforts to do so.

Treating Pakistan as a security-driven state rather than an ideological one is a dangerous policy that leads to appeasement. "The U.S. is the biggest enabler of this and incentivizes Pakistan to do its worst," Fair said. By suggesting that they are confronting terrorists who hold nuclear weapons, the Pakistani army "keeps the American checkbook open through the argument that it is too dangerous to fail." She concluded that even if an American decision to reverse these policies failed to transform Pakistan, at the least, the United States would not be directly underwriting Pakistan's production of nuclear weapons and the terrorist operations they facilitate.