WASHINGTON: Pakistan has taken a strategic decision and is ending its armsand weapons reliance upon the US weapon system.
Pakistan is gradually reducing its dependence on American militarytechnology and China is filling the gap, says a *Financial Timeslink>* reportlink>, whichalso warns that this shift will have geo-political repercussions as well.
The long, almost 2,000-word report notes that the shift started in the lastfew months of the Obama administration, when Congress blocked the sale ofeight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.
In Islamabad, this move was seen as a confirmation of Pakistan’s fear thatthe United States “could no longer be relied on as their armed forces’primary source of advanced weapons”, the report adds.
The shift started in the last few months of Obama administration, whenCongress blocked sale of eight F-16s to Islamabad
So, Pakistan shifted its focus from F-16s to the JF-17 fighter jets it isdeveloping with China, and which is catching up with the F-16 in terms ofcapabilities.
The ban accelerated Pakistan’s efforts to shift its “military procurementaway from American-made weapons towards Chinese ones, or those madedomestically with Chinese support.
The report also quotes data from the Stockholm International Peace ResearchInstitute, showing that since 2010, US weapons exports to Pakistan haveplummeted from $1 billion to just $21 million last year. During the sameperiod, those from China have also fallen, but much more slowly, from $747mto $514m, making China the biggest weapons exporter to Pakistan.
“The shift coincided with Islamabad’s growing suspicion about the closenessbetween the US and India, but was accelerated by the killing of Al Qaedaleader Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in 2011, which badly damagedrelations with the US,” the report added.
US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend $2bn of military aid toPakistan — announced in January — further exacerbated the situation.
Identifying one immediate impact of the move, the *FT* noted that USofficials were “now finding that Islamabad is less responsive than usual”to their requests for support in Afghanistan.
Harrison Akins, a research fellow at the Howard H Baker Jr Centre forPublic Policy at the University of Tennessee, told *FT*: “The Trumpadministration’s decision … can only push Pakistan further into the arms ofBeijing — especially with Pakistan’s shift from US military supplies toChinese military supplies.”
The report also identified longer-term consequences of this development,noting that sales of weapons systems, often backed by preferentialfinancial terms, were central to the way the US managed its network ofmilitary alliances and partnerships. But many of those countries were nowbuying some of that hardware from other governments, particularly China.
The *Financial Times* noted that Pakistan has been buying from Beijing fordecades, starting after the US placed an arms embargo on it in the wake ofthe 1965 war with India. “After that, every time Islamabad has suffereddiplomatic problems with Washington supplies of Chinese weapons haverisen,” it added.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Beijing provided supplies and technical knowledgeto help Pakistan develop its nuclear weapons, and in the early 1990sshocked Washington by selling its neighbour more than 30 M-11 missiles,capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
The report also noted that in the past decade, the nature of the militaryrelationship between China and Pakistan had changed. China was now sellingthe “high-end systems in which the US once specialised to Pakistan’smilitary, and is co-developing many others”.
Jon Grevatt, an analyst at the defence research company Jane’s IHS Markit,told *FT* that in the last decade, China collaborated much more expansivelywith Pakistan. Since 2010, China has provided A-100 rocket launchers andHQ-16 air defence missile systems to Pakistan while VT-4 tanks were nowbeing tested in Pakistan.
The report, however, focused on three weapons systems that encapsulate thenew Chinese capabilities, and threaten US influence in South Asia.
The first is the JF-17 fighter aircraft.
In 2007, Pakistan flew its first two JF-17s, which cost about a third ofthe price paid for an F-16. Later, China also shared the designs so thePakistan’s armed forces can build their own, and even export them.
In 2015, Pakistan used a drone to attack militants near the Afghan border,which strongly resembled a Chinese design.
In October 2016, just a month after the US refused to subsidise new F-16s,Beijing agreed to sell eight attack submarines to Pakistan for about $5bn —the biggest single arms export deal in the country’s history.
The report noted that submarines deal came at a time when Washington wasrelying on India to provide a bulwark against perceived Chinese maritimeexpansionism.