May 6, 2010 ☼ Economy ☼ Foreign Affairs ☼ free trade ☼ India ☼ jihadis ☼ military-jihadi complex ☼ Pakistan ☼ Security ☼ trade
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
In today’s Viewfinder at Yahoo! India columns Amit Varma says he sees “three distinct kinds of forces in Pakistan.”
One, the jehadi groups, which grow larger and more extreme because of self-perpetuating feedback loops, but are by no means the whole country. Two, the military establishment, whose incentives, as I wrote in a column three years ago, are aligned towards continuing the conflict with India. They have supported the jehadis, and have waged proxy wars through them, but are now under pressure to withdraw this support. And three, civil society, which wants what people everywhere want: peace, prosperity and a good future for themselves and their children. This, I believe, is most of Pakistan.
The stronger civil society gets, the weaker the support for extremism, and the more tenuous the military’s hold on the country. This is why I support increased trade and cultural exchanges with Pakistan (which is mutually beneficial anyway, as it’s a positive-sum game). I don’t think it’s contradictory to take a hard line towards Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure and a soft line towards their artists and businessmen. Both have the same end in mind. [Yahoo! India]Like Amit, I too support increased trade and cultural exchanges with Pakistan. But for a very different reason.
Far more than civil society, trade—more than culture—will benefit Pakistan’s elite society. To the extent that it does, and further, to the extent that this creates vested interests among Pakistan’s rich and powerful to prefer stable bilateral relations, better trading relations will be good for India.
Since there is no direct empirical evidence, this is only a hypothesis. But it is verifiable, involves modest risks and is reversible. Which is why I have argued that India should consider unilaterally dropping trade restrictions. Cultural exchanges might not work the same way because they won’t fatten up the Pakistani elite as commerce is likely to.
So you do not need to believe that a Pakistani civil society will rise, will challenge extremism and dismantle the military-jihadi complex to consider the merits of the trade argument. But it’s important to recognise that better trading relations will, at best, reduce Pakistani attacks against India. Destroying the military-jihadi complex is an entirely different and a much more important project.
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