Pakistanis are increasingly questioning the utility and wisdom of running an open-ended arms race with India. Except for a few interludes, Pakistan has run an intense cold war that inevitably entailed an arms race. After 56 years, it is time to assess the results of this unending quest to catch up with India. Have the Pakistanis succeeded in maintaining a power balance that was desired in 1950s and 1960s roughly at 1 to 3? Later the balance sought was reduced successively from 1 to 4 to 1 to 6 in subsequent years. What it now may be, it cannot be denoted by a neat figure because of excessive secrecy and uneven defence effort. Whatever it is, it is not satisfactory from Pakistan military's viewpoint, necessitating impossibly high outlays that not even a military regime can make.

Pakistanis need to learn lessons of history. That despite best efforts, Pakistan has continued to slip behind India in the military balance. That is not a fault of this or that government, though all governments should be criticised for assigning too high a priority to defence rather than development. A case can be made for keeping the military subordinated while the nation concentrates on as rapid an economic development as possible so that eventually there are more resources available for defence. But this is a bad argument because the suggested course is neither likely nor noble.

Second lesson of history is the destruction of the Soviets despite its huge armaments of all kinds and a big well-equipped army. Their military capabilities vis-à-vis the US-led west was awe-inspiring. And yet they collapsed. Many reasons are clear. A brutal dictatorship of party General Secretary made the people feel stifled, despite achieving substantial social goals: jobs, free medical care and education for all and cheap housing, transport and other services. The specific factor contributing to the implosion of the Soviet Union and overthrow of communism was their high priority to defence. That left fewer resources for improving, expanding and modernising of social services.

Let's turn to Pakistan. Doesn't the Soviet Union's demise sound a necessary alarm? Over-emphasis on the military and a militaristic approach were characteristic of Pakistan's policies even in 1947. The Kashmir problem was born with Maharaja dilly-dallying on the State's accession to either dominion. Pakistan started the proceedings with an invasion by tribal Lashkars. That gave India the excuse to mount a counter offensive, using its regular military. Pakistan was then forced to fight with its own regular troops. That development ignited an arms race that has gone on to this day and which is now being intensified. Pakistanis have to assess the results of this approach to the Kashmir issue that has shaped the totality of Pakistan-India relationship.

In the race for competitive military build up, Pakistan has comprehensively lost - mainly because it subordinated development to defence. It remains a long way behind India in economic development, of course. In military build up too it has been unsuccessfully coping with India's long strides simply because the latter has more resources. Pakistan has fought three and half wars with India and won none. In the first it had the satisfaction of retaining about a third of Kashmir; the second ended in a stalemate but was a political defeat insofar as the political battle over Kashmir was concerned; in the third, the entire Eastern Command had to surrender and that led to the disaster of having Pakistan dismembered; and the fourth little War, Kargil, was a rather juvenile misadventure. In short, there is nothing to be said for the militarist approach to policy-making.

As for the social and economic conditions in which most Pakistanis are forced to live, two facts stand out: the march of poverty during the last four years from 20 per cent to 33 per cent is telltale. The second concerns the Human Development Indicator (HDI): the year before it stood at the dismal figure of 129th among 188 UN members; a year later it slid even lower down the list. This is so in the 57th year of independence.

Up to a point the comparison with the Soviets holds: within a very few years, democracy collapsed in both and after that their history comprises a succession of dictators, in the case of Pakistan bureaucratic or military. In Pakistan, dictators have always ruled, with the exception of two interludes of nominal democracy: the first was (1972 to 1977) under ZA Bhutto while the second one (1986 to 1999) was described by Gen Musharraf himself as "sham" democracy. While Pakistan's military dictators cannot be compared with the communist ones in what the latter delivered, they certainly created the feeling of being stifled by denying them free speech, association and movement.

Insofar as dictatorship's suppression of politics and free press goes, one is forced to hand it to them for realising, always in time, when to relax restrictions and allow accumulated steam to escape from the body politic by permitting, for a time, free expression of opinions and selected activities. But each dictator always ended up by clamping down on both free political activity and expression. The current strong man has either adopted a new technique of selective suppression and selective relaxation or is toying with the idea of coming down heavily on the usual suspects. This is the kind of history that makes foreigners call Pakistan a Failed State or even a Rogue one. Many in America's think tanks write scenarios of how might it collapse.

Instead of becoming chauvinistic or paranoid over criticisms, external or domestic, thinking Pakistanis should coolly examine Pakistan's vulnerabilities. Inadvisability of sticking to militarist approaches is now a given. Down this road, there will be war some day because 2002's stand off cannot be repeated. The reliance on nukes' deterrent value to keep peace was exposed by 2002 experience as imprudent. War has to be avoided by Pakistan in its own interests to avoid the creation of an explosive mixture of a people feeling alienated -- which apathy and cynicism lead to -- and a conventional war's ups and downs. A new policy paradigm of amicable and productive cooperation with India has to be evolved with a view to promote a growth that actually improves the poor people's lot.

As a part of the militarist thinking, Pakistanis had found a short cut to making up the paucity of domestic resources in foreign aid plus borrowing. Military aid was neither adequate nor did it come cheap: something had to be given in return. Look around and see the effective loss of sovereignty; the US' role in Pakistan can only be described as that of a suzerain. Latest Islamabad policy appears to be to cultivate China and hopes to get some of what the US will not let it have. One will be remiss if he does not remind that all foreign aid has limits and is for a purpose -- not that of the donee. At some stage it stops and the iron framework of Pax Americana also prescribe's some limits. If American aid could not make up for Pakistan's fewer resources, Chinese aid too cannot revolutionise Pakistan.

One final word about the nukes: So long as a minimum deterrence works, so far so good. But if it fails by any side's actions, what is guaranteed is mutual destruction of no matter which magnitude. It amounts to defeat of both sides. Let the governments go back to analyse the 2002 stalemate; both faced the imminent prospect of the use of a nuclear weapon in terms of Islamabad's doctrines. Indians showed readiness to display equal madness and the foolish debate has merely been postponed. The fact is neither India nor Pakistan has a nuclear option

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.