Pakistan is not a Failed State. It's a Wildly Successful Scam

Tell me if you nod along with any of this: Pakistan is a struggling democracy, victim of colonial legacy, fighting terrorism while managing complex regional dynamics. Western foreign policy experts make sense when they talk about "strategic partnerships." Indian liberals have a point about "people-to-people connections" and "shared culture."

If you did, then you're delusional.

As the famous saying goes, Pakistan isn't a country that happens to have an army. It's an army that happens to have a country. And for seventy-eight years, this has been the most successful pyramid scheme in geopolitical history.

October 1947. Two months into their creation, most new nations would be figuring out postal services and currency. Not Pakistan. They were busy launching their first proxy war.

Major-General Akbar Khan sat in Lahore planning meetings. Not planning defense. Planning offense. Three-tier covert operations: arm tribal raiders, build underground networks, interdict Indian reinforcements. All deniable. All "voluntary."

The operation fails spectacularly. Pakistan loses. But Pakistan army wins. Because this failure becomes the foundation. Instead of soul-searching, the Pak army decided that this would be their business model going forward. Proxy warfare. Plausible deniability. Permanent crisis.

Most armies exist to make war unnecessary. Pakistan's army discovered something infinitely more profitable: making war inevitable.

You know what a protection racket is, right? Guy comes to your shop, says the neighborhood's dangerous, offers to protect you for a fee. Except he's the one making it dangerous.

Pakistan's military convinced everyone—their own people, external patrons, even enemies—that they were the only thing standing between civilization and chaos. Hindu domination. Soviet expansion. Indian hegemony. Terrorist infiltration.

• 1965: Launch proxy operation in Kashmir, escalate to full war when India responds. Lose, but claim moral victory.
• 1971: Brutalize East Pakistan until it rebels, fight India when they intervene. Lose half the country, but blame global conspiracies.
• 1999: Infiltrate Kargil during peace talks, nearly trigger nuclear war. Withdraw under pressure, but frame it as tactical brilliance.

Each disaster generates the next crisis. Each crisis justifies expanded military control. Each expansion enables bigger disasters. It's a bloody brilliant scam.

The United States—global champion of democracy and accountability—spent decades making this dysfunction profitable. Better a militarized Pakistan than a Soviet-aligned one right ? By the 1950s, America was actively helping Pakistan "match" India militarily. And it continues. $31 billion between 2002-2015. $17 billion for military capabilities. The rest? Well, those apartments in London aren't gonna buy themselves.

The nuclear program crystallized everything. A.Q. Khan's network was the perfect synthesis of Pakistan's pathologies. Parallel procurement systems. Shell companies. Technology transfers to Libya, North Korea, Iran. Japanese firms supplying specialized equipment through brokers. Everyone knew. Nobody stopped it. Because it served everyone's short-term interests.

Pakistan got strategic relevance. America got a nuclear ally. Suppliers got rich. Politicians got kickbacks. The fact that it destabilized global nonproliferation? Someone else's problem.

And the most Pakistani thing ever? They give medals for losing wars. After every military disaster, there are ceremonies. Commemorations of "strategic victories" and "tactical brilliance" and "valorous sacrifice." The narrative machinery kicks in: We showed courage. We proved our commitment. We demonstrated that Pakistan will never accept injustice. Jezba-e-quam

By the 1980s, this becomes the entire state model. Military needs enemies to justify budget. Enemies require proxies. Proxies enable rent-seeking. Rent-seeking funds political networks. Political networks protect military from oversight. Round and round it goes.

The army doesn't fight wars—it conducts jihad as a low-cost policy tool. It doesn't lose territory—it makes "tactical adjustments" while "bleeding the enemy." It doesn't get caught using proxies—it supports "freedom fighters."

Islamic legitimacy provides theological cover for what's essentially a protection racket. The "new Medina" rhetoric sanctifies military dominance.

India has eventually figured out the game. "Since we cannot reform Pakistan, let's ignore their provocations and build capacity until they're forced to deal with us normally." Imagine being so dysfunctional that your enemy's strategy becomes waiting for you to grow up.

But Real people pay for this insanity. Pakistan spends more on debt service than education. More on military procurement than healthcare. The army runs everything from bakeries to banks while positioning itself as guardian of national honor.

Civilian institutions never mature because they're never allowed real authority. Democratic culture never develops because every crisis justifies military "guidance." Economic development never takes priority because defense spending is sacred.

The performance continues. Every failure generates new reasons why more control is necessary. Every crisis proves only the military understands real threats. Every external criticism becomes evidence of foreign conspiracy.

Seventy-eight years of the same playbook. Crisis creation, external bailouts, symbolic victories over actual defeats. The systematic subordination of everything—democracy, economics, civil society—to military priorities. It's a successful con game.

Everything else—the corruption, proxy wars, strategic failures, economic stagnation, democratic backsliding—flows from that original inversion.
The tragedy isn't that Pakistan failed as a state. The tragedy is that it succeeded brilliantly as a military enterprise disguised as a state.
And the medals keep coming.

You want to understand Pakistan? Stop listening to what they say. Start watching what they do. Stop analyzing their rhetoric. The pattern is clear once you see it and once you do, you can't unsee it. And all those sophisticated excuses start looking like what they really are: cover stories for the world's most successful military protection racket.

The neighborhood's dangerous, they say.
They should know. They're the ones making it dangerous.