PAKISTAN’S ruling elites devote inordinate time and attention to foreign engagements — at the expense of tackling domestic challenges. The country’s media also tends to focus more on foreign policy and international events than on fundamental problems confronting the country. Switch on any TV channel and most talk shows are endlessly discussing Pakistan’s overseas forays, defence agreements, and other global developments. Some of this is understandable as a war in the neighbourhood and regional and international dynamics do have implications for Pakistan that merit comment. But domestic issues more consequential to the country’s fate and future rarely receive the same attention.

There may be several reasons for this. For ruling elites, foreign engagements are a way to access and collect geopolitical rents to keep the economy afloat, enabling them to avoid undertaking domestic reform. Their notion of ‘success’ rests on foreign alignments that can deliver these rents without having to expend political energy solving structural economic problems at home. Hence, the almost obsessive focus on foreign pursuits and lack of reform at home.

For governments resting on dubious electoral mandates, it is also the means to acquire international legitimacy to compensate for its absence at home. This is more so for authoritarian and hybrid regimes. There is also more cachet in taking overseas trips and having photo-ops with world leaders than trying to get ministries to do their job. That is why ministers often spend more time abroad than in the country, with prime ministers exceeding their predecessors’ record of foreign visits. Fixing the country’s problems is much harder than flying off to, say, Davos. A........

© Dawn