Parliament and the making of defence policy

Its essential to carry out mission to review, remake defence policy in a credible manner than doing a half-baked job.

The Defence Committee of the Parliament seems to be making strides in terms of debating the existing defence policy. In this regard, it recently even invited three alleged public intellectuals for a hearing, seeking their views on the two issues that seem to draw national attention: nuclear weapons and terrorism. This is indeed an encouraging development and one hopes it is sustained. It was also reported that the Committee hopes to soon come up with a policy that includes dealing with cyber warfare, psychological warfare and other kinds of threats. It is hoped that the said parliamentary committee will do justice to this project and give it the time it deserves so that they can successfully construct a useful document. Here are a few ideas that may prove helpful during the process.

Starting with the more mundane issues like the conduct of hearings of the committee, enough time should be set aside for a discourse between committee members and experts called for giving their opinion. Merely hearing statements will not help. Moreover, the Committee should lay down criteria for who constitutes an expert. For instance, there is no point calling a person having a certain qualification if he/she has not worked on that particular area and developed a theoretical framework or shown an understanding of the issue. Every field has its recognised expert whose work is established beyond a few opinion pieces in newspapers or a nod by the military establishment. Surely, the Committee has access to the military and must summon its representatives to give briefings. Thus, calling people who provide them with more of the same perspective doesn’t help. A variety of views and opinions is necessary and should echo in the policy. In fact, the process of making a new defence policy is critical as it can also help in bridging the gap between different schools of thoughts and people belonging to various ideological perspectives.

But more substantively, it must be understood that a defence policy is one of the by-products of a grand national strategy that encompasses the vision, objects, dreams and desires of a nation and a state. A defence policy ought to flow out of it and not precede it. The grand national strategy is critical since it determines the basic direction that a state wants to take. In Pakistan, we have historically never determined the direction. In fact, both our grand national strategy and the defence policy are opaque, which creates major confusion.

The fact of the matter is that it is due to the absence of a succinct grand-national strategy that there is generally so much confusion regarding the concept of “national interests”. People have been honoured and eulogised for upholding the national interest, while others have been tortured or humiliated for bringing it down. Yet, the term remains elusive and something that is generally defined by a few men in arms or their close aides.

Parliament can consider two different approaches to determining both the above-mentioned policies. First, it could get into a huddle with a variety of experts representing various political ideological perspectives and territorial divisions within the country to appreciate what people need and then determine the grand national strategy followed by a defence policy. Second, it could actually engage in a more ambitious exercise of assessing what the people want in terms of their security and future direction of the state. This is a path which was followed by South Africa several years ago. After the end of apartheid, the new elected government identified stakeholders in a national security policy that included the military, defence bureaucracy, defence industry and its vendors, politicians and people at large. Commissions were set up in all sub-regions and people were invited to testify and talk about what kind of security they wanted. The reports of hundreds of such commissions were then collated and went into making of the grand national strategy that defined the future direction of South Africa. The next document to be prepared was a defence policy, a vision statement for the armed forces and an assessment of the size and strength of the military.

For the sceptics of this approach, who may argue that the common man is ignorant of higher military and security matters, they should be warned that the public is the prime beneficiary of defence which is why defence spending is considered a public good. Therefore, it is necessary for the state to access what people consider as a threat or the biggest challenge facing the nation, since the perception may vary from region to region (there is also the possibility that in the next few years, the perception of threat and security may generally become singular due to the proliferation of the Jamaatud Dawa and the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan cadres throughout the country that seem to be converting people to a certain set of ideas. This means that in a few years there might be lesser difference on certain issues between people in Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa). Furthermore, it is important to note that in the South African case, people did not necessarily ask for elimination of the military but the exercise helped in rationalising the military security structure and fine-tuning its nuts and bolts. People are only afraid of such an idea due to their fear for their personal interests and bias.

Of course, there is always the possibility that a member of the august parliamentary committee may think that all of this is a lengthy exercise in collecting opinions and that crystallising them into a useable form sounds like a long-term exercise, which they may not be interested in. There is a general preference all over the country to do visible projects with a shorter gestation period that can bring quicker accolades to the people who undertake them. However, it is essential to carry out the mission of reviewing and remaking a defence policy in a credible manner rather than doing a half-baked job. What is important is the making of a policy rather than the pretence of making one.

Ultimately, it is the accommodation of multiple perspectives and opposing views without physical and psychological harassment of the people that will strengthen this state.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2012.