The forgotten NSP
WHEN the PTI government introduced Pakistan’s first-ever National Security Policy (NSP) in 2022, the framework placed its primary emphasis on geo-economics and the pursuit of economic security. However, as this five-year policy nears expiration, it seems that the geo-economic vision and citizen-centric approach envisioned under the NSP have failed to achieve their objectives. This lack of success stems from three major reasons.
The foremost reason is the curse of political discontinuity. When prime minister Imran Khan unveiled Pakistan’s first-ever NSP in January 2022, it was hailed as a revolutionary pivot towards a citizen-centric geo-economic future. Yet, just months later, the predictable wheel of Pakistani political instability turned, and with the ouster of the PTI government, the strategic document was promptly relegated to bureaucratic limbo. It seems that in Pakistan’s deeply polarised political landscape, structural continuity is a luxury. Successive administrations traditionally suffer from a profound ‘ownership gap’, and view the policy blueprints of their predecessors with suspicion. This does not mean that the incoming coalition government ripped up the NSP. Rather, the subsequent administrations of the PDM alliance and then the PML-N-led coalition found itself completely consumed by the base instincts of political survival and immediate fiscal fires. These priorities diluted institutional focus and shifted the national priority from long-term economic integration to immediate to short-term emergency bailouts.
Secondly, a viable geo-economic vision cannot survive in a fortress state. Rather, it demands liberalised trade policies, open borders, and a hyper-competitive export sector. But Islamabad remains wedded to an inward-looking protective regime, that maintains high tariffs on intermediate inputs averaging eight per cent, which is twice as high as Indian and Bangladeshi standards, effectively cutting off Pakistan’s industries from global value chains. This protectionism has pushed Pakistan’s export capacity against a hard structural ceiling, rendering regional competitive advantage remarkably weak. When the NSP was introduced, Pakistan’s total exports had reached a record $39.52 billion. Yet, while the policy promised a geo-economic turnaround to boost these numbers, subsequent years brought severe political instability and soaring energy tariffs that caused total exports to contract.
Third, for Pakistan, a fractured and hostile neighbourhood is a major constraint in realising its geo-economic strategy. Even the most robust economic policies are ultimately at the mercy of geography. The regional assumptions that underpinned Pakistan’s first-ever NSP collapsed almost as soon as the ink dried. At the time of the NSP’s release, there was cautious optimism in the strategic community of Islamabad. Backchannel diplomacy with India had successfully culminated in a 2021 understanding to ‘strictly observe’ a ceasefire along the Line of Control. This development indicated a slow path towards normalisation despite the scar of the 2019 Pulwama-Balakot crisis. However, New Delhi’s uncompromising policy of refusing any structural dialogue effectively froze the eastern front for Pakistan. Furthermore, New Delhi’s subsequent decision to hold the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, coupled with the intense four-day armed hostilities of May 2025, has effectively slammed the door on any lingering hopes for normalisation in the foreseeable future.
A viable geo-economic vision cannot survive in a fortress state.
Simultaneously, Islamabad’s grand calculations on its western border have turned to dust. The initial hope that the Afghan Taliban regime in Kabul would secure transit corridors to Central Asia was quickly shattered. Instead of acting as a cooperative partner, Kabul chose to prioritise its ideological fraternity with the TTP over its relationship with Islamabad. This policy decision of the Taliban regime plunged the Pak-Afghan border into a volatile cycle of skirmishes, trade closures, and a severe domestic security crisis that completely derailed the NSP’s transit-hub ambitions. Resultantly, bilateral commerce between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Afghan transit trade volume via Pakistan, and third-country exports through Pakistan contracted sharply. Adding to this paralysis, Pakistan’s southwestern frontier remains structurally locked. While the diplomatic relationship with Iran has managed to be stable and progressive, the pervasive American sanctions regime has severely strangled any realistic potential to further enhance economic ties with Tehran.
Pakistan’s geo-economic vision cannot be realised until Islamabad radically restructures its domestic priorities and foreign policy architecture on three major fronts. First and foremost, Islamabad must insulate its core economic strategy from the volatile swings of its political cycles. This demands a rare moment of political maturity, where cross-party consensus elevates economic diplomacy to a non-partisan national objective and ensures that a change at the Prime Minister’s Office doesn’t translate into abandonment of the country’s long-term economic roadmap.
Second, Islamabad must formally divorce its economy from its security apparatus, and treat them as separate, independent domains so that trade channels are never again sacrificed to the knee-jerk impulses of geopolitical friction. Instead of attempting a grand, macro-level regional integration that is easily checked by state-level hostility, Islamabad must pivot towards a bottom-up approach that maximises its leverage by creating dedicated border economic zones and automated, high-tech transit terminals with its eastern and western neighbours.
Third, to transition from a security state to a true citizen-centric development state, Pakistan must boldly address its structural bottlenecks. This means dismantling the protectionist tariff walls that stifle innovation, aggressively diversifying the low-tech export basket beyond textiles, and creating a stable, predictable regulatory environment capable of attracting genuine foreign direct investment. Regionally, while the geopolitical landscape remains treacherous, Islamabad cannot afford to be economically isolated. It must leverage its strategic partnership with Beijing to optimise the next phase of CPEC, while simultaneously utilising creative, localised trade arrangements with Kabul and Delhi, where formal diplomatic breakthroughs remain stalled.
Islamabad must realise that, while it has regained significant strategic importance in the Middle East, and beyond to some extent, it finds itself increasingly isolated within its own region. To fix this, Pakistan must fundamentally rethink its regional and domestic policies so it can truly benefit from its renewed global influence and turn its geo-economic objectives into lasting economic growth.
The writer is a strategic analyst of international security. The views expressed are his own.
Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2026
