Media Spin: “Pakistan increased military spending”
By 
Shan-ul-Hai •
June 11, 2008
I was browsing Fark.com today (as I often do) and noticed that they classified Pakistan’s recent increase in military spending in their “scary” category. Personally, I don’t even see why that story was important enough to get noticed by Reuters, but apparently numbers scare people.
If you look at the actual story itself, you’ll see that the spending increase was only a total of 7%. When you consider the fact that Pakistan faced 7% inflation in 2007 and 11% in the first half of 2008, it seems like a 7% spending increase is actually more like a net decrease. But if a person wants to make the story seem “scary”, all they have to do is take some things out of context; Fark used a tagline of “Pakistan increases military spending to 300 billion rupees, plans to outfit military with large shields and extra health potions”. 300 billion rupees sounds like a lot more than its equivalent in US Dollars ($4.4 billion); in fact, there are over 200 people in the world who have enough money to pay that entire budget out of their own pockets.
I won’t deny that Pakistan’s military may be too powerful for the country’s own good. But what choice do they have when their rival neighbor (India) is spending 6 times as much on their military and boasts 6 times as big of a population? And why is Pakistan’s action labeled as “scary” when India actually increased their spending even more (10% increase, despite only 6% inflation)?
Popularity: 22% [?]
| 3.2 |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Pakistan’s rise in military spending is actually scary for a number of reasons:
(1) Pakistan is a Politically UNstable country:
(a) How many military coups has it had in the 60 yrs of its existence? India on the other hand has had none …
(b) What happened to Benazir? Don’t forget that Musharaff had 3 narrow escapes …
the list continues … but I don’t want to waste time on things you already know
Given these premises, it is not unlikely that the power could fall into hands of say the Islamic Fundamentalists, whose presence is quite obvious?
(2) Your economic argument is not quite sound ..
You don’t generally consider Military spending in light of Inflation rate. It is funny that more often economists argue that increased military spending is a factor in increased inflation. The reasoning is partly that you are increasing demand by taking money away for military spending without adding supply. While this point can be debated, the claim that military spending has actually *decreased* is rather silly. And perhaps the high inflation rate is an indicator of how the country is over-spending for military.
Given this point it is clear that Pakistan is perhaps spending more than it can afford for its military …
(3) In ref: “But what choice do they have when their rival neighbor (India) is spending 6 times as much on their military and boasts 6 times as big of a population?”
GDP of India is almost 10x that of Pakistan. And if Pakistan cannot match India’s military might, they should focus on their own problems rather than send people across border to infiltrate …
(4) Pak keeps trying to sell weapons to Crazy countries who are enemies of most parts of the world including US (Iran and North Korea) …
For these reasons, it is justified for people to be wary of the Pakistan and its military …
Pakistan is definitely spending more than it can afford on the military, but the point is that EVERY country increases military spending EVERY year. 7% is really not that bad considering the increases in prices of oil and food in the last year.
They may be politically unstable, but any Pakistani can tell you that the Islamic extremists don’t have any chance of getting any real power there. They’re still part of the minority.
Also, they don’t sell weapons to Iran and North Korea as a state… it’s just that one rogue scientist from Pakistan sold some of their secrets.
The fact that they “send people across the border to infiltrate” is just an allegation with no real evidence.
They haven’t really been failing to match India’s “military might”… they just have to stay competitive because there is plenty of aggression on both sides of the border.
Pakistan does not have any sort of history of being militarily aggressive. Sure, they have had plenty of domestic issues in the field, but aside from the wars with India (which were always sparked by a 2-sided conflict, not an unprovoked invasion), they have never attacked any other country.