New Delhi: “We bought $55 billion and constructed delusions.” That’s how former Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, summed up many years of worldwide help to Pakistan in a video clip – which continues to echo greater than 10 years after it was recorded. Whereas international locations like South Korea and Taiwan used overseas help to remodel their economies, he says within the video, Pakistan funneled billions into constructing a “stronger” navy and little else.

Quick-forward to Could 9, 2025, and the sample stays the identical. The Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) authorized one more $2.4 billion bailout for Pakistan, $1 billion beneath the Prolonged Fund Facility (EFF) and $1.4 billion beneath a newly launched Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF), meant to help local weather adaptation. As soon as once more, the worldwide neighborhood stepped in to stabilise a faltering financial system. And as soon as once more, Pakistan’s protection spending is untouched.

Even because it pleads poverty to worldwide collectors, Pakistan’s navy arsenal continues to develop. Even supposing a nation whose GDP is hovering round simply $236 billion yearly and the nation scrambles to pay for gasoline, meals and overseas debt, its stockpile of fighter jets, drones, submarines and warships continues to develop.

So how does a cash-strapped nation hold shopping for bombs?

Over 80% of Pakistan’s navy imports now come from China. Its help goes past arms. It extends beneficiant credit score strains with lenient phrases – low rates of interest, prolonged grace durations and compensation schedules that stretch over years. This financing technique permits Islamabad to obtain cutting-edge navy gear with out the rapid want for money.

Pakistan additionally advantages from an uncommon inner construction – a navy institution that’s mentioned to be economically self-sufficient. Via an unlimited industrial empire encompassing farmland, cement factories, funding corporations and housing tasks, Pakistan’s armed forces generate its personal income. A lot of it goes past the scrutiny or management of the civilian authorities.

This “state inside a state” mannequin allows the navy to function with monetary autonomy, whilst the remainder of the nation faces austerity and borrowing.

Worldwide help traditionally has additional enabled this paradox. Since 1948, the US alone has funneled $40 billion into Pakistan by way of navy and financial help. Factoring in contributions from the UK, Europe and Canada, the determine surpasses $55 billion. However the returns on this funding have been questionable.

“Pakistan by no means gave up its obsession with India. Each greenback simply made the navy stronger,” Haqqani mentioned within the video, arguing that strategic fixation formed how Pakistan spent its help, not on improvement or reform, however on reinforcing navy energy.

Critics at the moment warn that even IMF funds, meant for financial stabilisation and local weather resilience, could find yourself not directly supporting protection. In Pakistan’s opaque fiscal system, cash is fungible and oversight is usually weak. Regardless of repeated IMF circumstances urging protection spending cuts and structural reforms, little progress has been made as a result of Pakistan’s navy controls every thing – political management, assets and decision-making. And this grip reveals no signal of loosening.

Haqqani’s outdated warning feels extra related than ever: “Pakistan stored coming again to Uncle Sam each two years after abusing him as a result of Uncle pays the payments.”

Uncle Sam could have been changed by Uncle IMF in 2025. However the payments, and the bombs, are nonetheless very a lot a part of the story.