The Brookings Institute: Conclusions by Stephen P. Cohen
At the most abstract level of analysis, the interplay between the contested ideas of Pakistan and the integrity
of the Pakistani state will be determinative. When a state is unable to protect its citizens and to collect the
taxes required for the delivery of basic services, its citizens will cease to regard themselves as citizens but as
subjects. They will try to leave the state, seek to transform the very “idea” that holds them together, or fight
the state – or all three at the same time. Pakistan has never had a workable arrange-ment between the state
and those who are ruled. In the words of Professor Hamid Kizilbash, talking about the upsurge in sectarian
and political violence, “the people we ignored are taking their revenge.”
There are five or six necessary things to happen before Pakistan can be safely put in the “normal” category.
These include relations with India, a revived economy, a repaired state, a rebalanced civil-military relationship,
a redefined role of the military in the state, fighting domestic insurgencies more effectively, allowing a
reshaped police force to emerge, and finding a new role for Pakistan vis-à-vis its neighbors, notably India.
The politicians would have to moderate their disputes, concentrating on issues and reform, and not patronage
and corruption. However, none of these would seem to be a sufficient factor that trumps all others. In the end,
“muddling through” will have at least four or five variations.
Historically, states and empires regularly come and go. The U.N. was founded with 51 states and now has
192. The old Chinese, British, French, Dutch and German empires have all vanished or shrunk. The British
Indian Raj, of which Pakistan is one of the legatees, has vanished, breaking up the strategic unity of the
Subcontinent and pitting the two successor states against each other. The Soviet empire is also gone, there
being nothing certain about the future of all or any states and imperial operations. Yugoslavia no longer exists; neither does Czechoslovakia, East Ger-many or Manchuria.