Pakistan and Missiles

Here, the NY Times reports that Pakistan is modifying US missiles (which they receive through military aid) to strike at land based targets (and this presumably means India).

I'm no knee-jerk opponent of military assistance--there are certainly times that providing weapons to our allies makes sense (for example, when they are fighting the Taliban, as is the Pakistani army), but I do wonder why we should be surprised that the Pakistani military is preparing for a war with India. Isn't it what they've always done? We don't want to see a war between India and Pakistan--generally, war between two nuclear powers is probably bad--but there are really legitimate reasons, if you are a Pakistani general, to see India as a potential threat.

Although it seems clear to us that the Pakistani army should forget about fighting India and concentrate on fighting the Taliban, a parallel to this sort of weapons experimentation has been taking place within our own military establishment, with the debate over the construction of new F-22 fighter jets. Opponents of the move say that these jets aren't great for fighting our current foes--Islamic extremists--but supporters of the jets say that they're needed in case of a war with somebody else (China? Russia?)

Engaging in a little bit of Lasswellian policy analysis here, my own policy prescription for Pakistan would be a greater focus on economic policy-making. I see stable democracy as an outcome of economic growth (we can debate the reasons for this relationship, but the relationship seems reasonably clear) and therefore, we should be focusing on promoting economic growth.

Because democracies only rarely fight one another, I would argue that we should be attempting to prevent war between India and Pakistan by encouraging democracy, and maybe the best way to do that is through the promotion of economic growth.

As an aside, I should add that I'm not convinced that Pakistan is a democracy. Although there have been elections, they are not free and competitive in a true sense--democracy in Pakistan today resembles democracy in the United States around 1820, when most ethnic minorities, the poor, and women had little say in political outcomes. Pakistan's democracy is a political competition between wealthy political factions, not a competition between candidates who truly represent the masses.