Pakistan-India Trade:

Amin Hashwani
would have been possible. Even today, neither the government nor civil
society has made any undue objection to moving the peace process forward,
and nor have they tried to obstruct it—a fact acknowledged by all
stakeholders in Pakistan. However, this does not mean that there is no
concern within the army about the threats from across the border, or
that the sense of insecurity driven by fears of a much larger foe has in any
way diminished.
Ground Realities
India’s defense budget, which traditionally used to be about double the
size of Pakistan’s, has in recent decades grown from 20 to 30 percent annually.
Today, it stands at about seven times larger than that of Pakistan.
This gap continues to grow, since Pakistan’s defense budget has remained
more or less static due to its internal economic problems.
A commonly cited explanation for India’s steep rise in military
spending has been that it is acting as a counterweight to China’s own
military buildup. But the ground realities are viewed very differently in
Pakistan. “India’s Army and Aerospace Force combat strength is almost
totally deployed against Pakistan,” writes Ikram Sehgal, a Pakistani security
analyst, “but if you were to hear Indian defense analysts (all for
western consumption), their main worry is China and not Pakistan.” 2
One can, perhaps, argue about the exact numbers, but the point
remains that India’s major armed forces are disproportionally positioned
against Pakistan. Its future arms build-up is also perceived to
be more suitable for the desert terrain of the border with Pakistan
than the mountainous border with China. With such a disproportionate
arms imbalance and with continued unresolved tensions, there is
always the possibility of coercive diplomacy being applied during a
crisis. Then there is India’s Cold Start doctrine (designed specifically
against Pakistan), which many in the Pakistani security establishment
perceive as a policy to use limited but offensive and punitive strikes at
relatively short notice. 3 Such ground realities continue to seed a “trust
deficit” and a sense of insecurity in the establishment, despite the latter’s
subtle support for the peace process.
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