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The military coup in Pakistan is being essentially supported
by Bhutto who is in exile in Britain. Clearly for venal pragmatic reasons she is
prepared to support the undermining of formal democracy.
The military coup in Pakistan indicates that bourgeois
democracy in Pakistan is a total sham. It is a sham in the sense that these
democratic regimes are only exist because the military support them. In this
sense such democratic regimes are hardly democratic in the sense that Gt Britain
or France is.
In general democratic regimes in Pakistan are merely
disguised forms by which the military rule. This is why a general can serve as a
cabinet minister. The conditions for genuine formal bourgeois democracy do not,
it would seem to me, exist as of yet in Pakistan.
The power of the military in Pakistan is an expression of the
lack of cohesion and weakness of Pakistani capitalism. The military is the only
really national centralised organisation in Pakistan. Consequently it is
forced to maintain power to stop Pakistan collapsing into anarchy. Clearly
the social relations of production are not highly developed enough to allow for
normal democratic conventions to obtain.
Washington is clearly watching events in Pakistan with alarm
since the coup may signal the emergence of greater tension between India and
Pakistan. It was hoped by Washington that the ousted Prime Minister would have
succeeded in establishing a settlement with India over Kashmir --a source of so
much India/Pakistan conflict. Anything that undermines the prospects of closer
relations obtaining between these two countries suits Beijing's nationalist
interests. Beijing could only but feel threatened by improving Indo-Pakistan
relations.
In the post-cold world it is not always in Washington's
interests to support military regime's in less economically developed countries.
A weak democratic regime can prove a more pliant tool than a stronger and more
independent regime. A more independent military regime may have been more
actively encouraged in the past as part of a strategic effort to contain and
weaken the Soviet Union. However in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet
Union Washington's global strategy has been changing.
The prevailing view is that the military coup was undertaken
by a more stridently nationalist army which saw its credibility being undermined
by the Prime Minister. Nothing could be further from the truth. The military
coup was mounted because of the fear of the masses. The Pakistani economy has
been going through a bad time. The ousted regime was correspondingly
experiencing growing unpopularity. The military, because of its existence as a
national and relatively highly centralised institution with a widespread
intelligence network, would know better that any other element in Pakistan what
conditions among the mass of the population were like. So rather than wait for
the Indonesian "virus" to strike the Pakistan military moved into position as a
pre-emptive action.
The coup then contains within itself a contradiction. A
contradiction between the domestic imperatives of Pakistani capitalism and the
strategic imperatives of international capitalism. However the contradiction may
be more apparent than real. The military regime may not be as belligerent
towards India as seems to be commonly thought. This is why Washington is
being rather cautious about Pakistani events.
Warm regards
George Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site
at
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~beprepared/ |