Islamabad, Jan 15: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday presented the country’s first-ever national security policy which has put the country’s economic stability at the centre stage, Dawn reported on Saturday.
“Pakistan’s vital national security interests are best served by placing economic security as the core element of national security. The country’s security imperatives in the next decade will be driven by the need to realise its economic potential while ensuring national cohesion, territorial integrity, internal security, and citizen welfare,” National Security Policy (NSP) 2022-2026 states.
The NSP was approved by the federal cabinet last week, and on Friday a public version of the policy was unveiled by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
While economic security is at the core of Pakistan’s new national security vision, other areas covered in the document include national cohesion and the usual defence and territorial integrity, internal security, foreign policy, and human security.
The policy, has being described as an umbrella document for various sectoral policies and provides strategic guidance for action in these priority areas, while identifying opportunities and challenges, while making a rare distinction between traditional security that focuses primarily on defence, territorial integrity, internal security, and diplomacy; and non-traditional security, which consists of broader elements that impinge on a country’s economic health and well-being of the citizens’.
Pakistan has in recent days been battling record inflation at all levels and a significant rise in the cost of living for all Pakistanis has been running from pillar to post trying to secure loans from the IMF and other friendly countries like Saudi Arabia to bail itself out of the economic deep hole that it finds itself in even as the country’s defence budget has been spiraling upwards taking the country to the verge of economic collapse.
