Is it just the Pakistan Army which influences the making of national policy, or does this happen in other militaries as well, especially in advanced western democracies?
It is quite recent that President Trump ordered U.S troops to pull out of Syria. This order was trumped by Secretary Mattis and the ruling Pentagon hierarchy, and so the President blinked, and the troops stayed on.
Going back a few years, V.P Dick Cheney called a meeting of the top brass of his military. The agenda for the meeting was known i.e to propose a plan for an attack on Iran. The military brass, led by Admiral William Fallon, was clear that this was a bad idea. So, the brass prepared to counter Cheney. It was decided that while the military will let Cheney have his plan, the onus of the most important part of this plan i.e the withdrawal of the forces after a successful invasion [without which no plan could be complete], would be left to Cheney to figure out!
Thus, primarily because of Admiral Fallon’s courage and clear head, Iran was spared destruction.
These two examples are the ones I can more readily recall where the U.S military butted heads with their civilian overlords, and halted policy thrusts which they considered inimical to national interests, despite what the textbook on political science has to say on the subject.
Why Fallon* and his group of offending generals, nor Mattis and those who took orders from him, were not immediately put out to pasture was because, irrespective of the textbook, the reality of the power equation simply did not allow this. And this reality is mostly at variance with the theory in the textbook.
It is ideal that every institution should operate within its own ambit. But ideals have seldom lived except in the lives of a few great men or in the transcendent flourishes of rhetoric. Ideals are benchmarks which humanity chases in its quest of constant improvement. But at any one time or place, it is not ideals people live by, but by the harsh dictates of reality. And one of these dictates is the uneasy equilibrium of power between institutions and, at a personal level, among people. Power equations are formed not by what “ought to be” [ideal], but by what “is” [reality].
All armies have power. This power is not driven by altruism, but by laws; by structures like that of political commissars; by gradually built-up traditions which alter the thinking of the players; and above all by the credibility of the institutions which are the contending centers of power, and the thinking of the populace at large i.e whether the people at large accept the exercise of overt power by the army or not. And this last is directly determined by the functioning and credibility of the political dispensation at the helm.
The constitutions of most countries foresee situations where the state is overwhelmed by crises, which reach such a pass that the state is no longer able to function normally when most institutions vital to governance are paralyzed. In such situations the army is the last institution standing and is called in to restore normalcy.
In Pakistan the army was always disproportionately more powerful than the other institutions. This gave it the incentive to respond to crises by giving itself the call to restore such normalcy, and then inviting itself to govern the country. Each time the army has moved in, it has done so to great public applause which was more an echo of the disappointment of a majority of the public at large with the performance of its political leadership. Without this the almost seamless intrusions of the army into the halls of political power would have been all but impossible.
Some of the crises cited by the army for moving in have been fairly serious indeed. But crises are disruptions of a temporary nature. Thus, the forays of the army into governing the country should also have been temporary. And after the restoration of normalcy the army should have withdrawn to the barracks. But instead of doing this, the army always tried to evolve itself into a political party and stay in power. This inevitably infected the army with the same ills and contamination as the political parties which it had overthrown. So the army not only failed to correct some of the most glaring of such ills, which the exercise of dictatorial powers should have allowed it to do, but also wounded itself in the process.
The prime justification given for the “permanence” of such military takeovers has been that it was only after the takeover that the army realized that the problems to be grappled with were too deep rooted, that it had no option but to stay at the helm and sort all the problems out. The more candid explanation normally was that it was riding a tiger and simply could not afford to get off i.e the fear of the law–of what would happen to them after they gave up power. This was a hogwash argument at best for the simple reason that if the army had the power to take over, it surely had the power to have laws made which would give it immunity.
Pakistan would have been much better served had the army never taken over but used its considerable influence from behind the curtain, and limited this only to matters which concerned national security. For this to have happened, national security imperatives would first have to be defined and a forum created where these issues, the principal of which should have included mega corruption and the playing of the ethnic and religious cards, could have been openly discussed, so that potential problems could have been defused before the point of criticality was ever reached. This would have accorded formal recognition to the de facto power of the army and channeled the use of this power to a legitimate area, and confined it there, and this would have caused a manifold reduction in the possibilities of military takeovers.
This is how matters would have gone some way to crystallize had Gen Jehangir Karamat’s suggestion of a National Security Council been accepted. But instead of accepting it, Nawaz Sharif forced the general to resign, as he saw in this suggestion an attempt to curtail his own power, whereas in reality it would have led to its enhancement, by confining the army’s use of influence/power within certain well-defined parameters.
Yet when one examines the moving spirit of the “Charter of Dacoity” i.e unhindered access to the coffers of the state and their plunder with impunity by thugs of either of the two main political parties and their partners in power, does one realize that the formation of a National Security Council would indeed have meant the curtailment of power of any Prime Minister driven by greed and rapacity without check. It is thus that Nawaz Sharif could not have got along with any army chief who exhibited even the faintest signs of a backbone, driven to stiffening for the cause of national interest.
Had F.M Ayub Khan held power over the army as long as he did, but refrained from taking over, and exercised power remotely and only in areas which concerned national security, what a difference that could have made to the destiny of Pakistan! But such hopes are built on idealistic thoughts which see a miracle coincide with a man. Yet history has thrown up such miracles where one man has taken a people by the scruff of their necks and dragged them out of the mire of misfortune. Perhaps our time for that to happen, has yet to come.
* Admiral Fallon was nudged into resigning a couple of months later for an article in which his views collided with presidential policy, especially concerning Iran.