Guns vs butter

The times, they are changing

Things are improving. Pakistan recently tested successfully the Hatf VIII missile. The media didn’t pick this event up and use it as a symbol of the large military budget. Hot on the heels of the budget, where even the mention of the CDA’s horticultural budget springs up passionate debates of how the money should be spent somewhere else, the media reported it and moved on.

Keeping mum is actually an improvement. In earlier times, such missile launches were accompanied by the sort of hysterical fanfare that would let the Freudian jokes write themselves. Is the natural progression, then, moving on towards lampooning the military’s largesse towards themselves every opportunity the media gets?

Maybe. What, exactly, could be the reason?

With the freer airwaves, the propensity of journalists to question things increases. Yes, there is much censorship and self-censorship but the whole ambit keeps expanding. Slowly at times, faster at others, there is a ratcheting effect when it comes to criticism of the military. For instance, even when the deep state supposedly uses its leverage with the media houses to tone things down, the quantum of criticism even in those relatively muted times is much, much higher than it was in, say, the ‘80s.

The other reason for this is each successive instances of public resentment. For instance, with the behaviour of the army and airforce during the Abbottabad strike far from their carefully fashioned image, and then that of the navy in the Mehran base attack, over the course of a couple of weeks, all three services got their share of flak in public discourse. Spend so much on them and they still can’t do much and what have you. That all makes it difficult not to question military spending when the opportunity presents itself.

The third reason, felt all over the world, is the realisation that warfare is changing. In the US, for instance, cold war era opponents of excessive military spending were silenced with the fear of the Soviet Union. With the asymmetric warfare of today, though much surveillance equipment might be needed, there is not as much need for the intercontinental ballistic missiles, fighter jets and other heavy, conventional warfare equipment that the military-industrial complex loves to make.

For the average Pakistani, who faces the scourge of terror, security spending means beefing up the police and civil armed forces. It means spending on the army as well but in ways that aids it taking out militant enclaves in the tribal areas. You can’t do that with Hatf missiles. You can’t do it with Mirage aircrafts. You can’t do it with Augusta gunships.

We need to have conventional weapons. But not more than we should.