Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: Quest for an Ideal Balance

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explain the impact of factors like socio_x0002_political environment, governance, quality of democracy and military’s institutional dynamics on the civil-military relations in Pakistan’s context. The objective is to help identify the necessary measures to bring about the best possible balance in the relations. Samuel Phillips Huntington, an American political scientist, adviser and academician, and an ardent supporter of civilian control over military has suggested objective and subjective control approaches to render the military subservient and politically sterile role viz-a-viz the civilians. Another approach is of Morris Janowitz, who suggests greater value convergence and interaction between the civil and military components of the state through change in the military’s role from traditional armies towards a more democratically inclined constabulary model. There are other theorists like Feaver and Desch also who suggest military’s subordination to the civilians as an internally accepted canon regardless of the environmental considerations. Similarly, Theorists like Finer and Lasswell warn of a domination of politics by the military on account of its organisational strength and the ideological fervour viz-a-viz weak civilian political institutions and leadership. Rebecca Schiff also proposes a concordance of values and interests between the people, the armed forces and the political leadership based on certain well-defined indicators. An analysis of those indicators in this paper prognosticates a positive trajectory of the civil-military relations. The benchmarking of the quality of civil-military relations in Pakistan on the Geneva-based Security Center for Governance’s Democratic Control of Armed Forces criteria also indicates reasonably strong fundamentals for a right balance in the relations except two areas i.e., the expertise of the civilians in the military affairs and weakness of civilian oversight institutions. The paper suggests the need for bridging the intellectual and ideological gap in civil-military relations through intellectual and organisational reforms. It recommends attaining political legitimacy through effective governance and achievements of desired concordance between the people, the military and the political leadership focused on civilian oversight structures, reforms in Higher Defence Organisation and the ceding of right constitutional space to the civil and military components of the state. Some useful lessons from the case studies of civil-military relations in countries like Indonesia, Israel, Turkey, Venezuela and Bolivia have also been culled to highlight the salience of environmental factors and the internal military ethos of voluntary subordination to the constitutionally instituted civilian governments.