Reinventing Brand Pakistan

In a previous piece on the subject (‘Where is Brand Pakistan?’ January 22, 2024), I had highlighted how country brands are becoming as important as corporate or product brands, given the increasing competition for attracting economic resources.

While the most expensive corporate brand – Apple – is estimated to be worth $880 billion, the biggest country brand, USA, is valued at an astounding $30 trillion. I had also brought out how a country’s brand impacts a country’s ability to attract trade, tourism, foreign investment and perhaps foreign assistance and international clout.

Sadly, Pakistan’s soft power, which was at its peak in the 1960s, has fallen to perhaps an all-time low, quantified by reputable brand rating agencies, at about half that of Bangladesh and less than a quarter that of the UAE, whose nine million population comprises mostly South Asians.

My emphasis that, despite the multiple challenges Pakistan faces, it needs to invest in repairing its national brand because without that it would be hard to enhance the desperately needed foreign investment and exports evoked argument, with a ring of truth, that “unless the fundamentals are improved it would be unproductive to work on building a brand.”

Fundamentals such as deep-rooted macroeconomic imbalances, appalling state of human development, precarious security situation, poor governance, low quality of education – and the list goes on – all need to be attended to rather pressingly. As a matter of fact, since the last piece was published the state of our democracy is also being questioned internationally and has attracted particularly prejudicious media coverage; with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), downgrading Pakistan’s government category from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian dispensation.

While I entirely agree with the need to assiduously work on improving the fundamentals listed, I would argue that these fundamentals would be hard to improve if our country brand stays in the cellar. No country can prosper in the current era without building mutually beneficial linkages with the world. Our economy cannot improve without greatly enhancing exports, FDI, tourism, access to international capital and more favourable terms from international financial institutions.

And we need greater international clout like that of India which enables it to literally run with the hare and hunt with the hounds in terms of forging most profitable partnerships without toeing any line. Despite the broad-based sanctions on Russia and Iran, India has been able to sustain and strengthen lucrative commercial cooperation with both. And despite being part of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy, it sustains wide-ranging economic interaction with China. While India’s size and placement on the global chessboard may be the key factors, its far superior country brand than Pakistan is a contributing factor too.

In my experience, the lack of understanding within the policymaking circles over how the national brand development matters is astounding. In one instance, where I endeavoured to explain to a federal minister the need to invest in improving our country’s brand by projecting our strengths, the response was ‘what are we going to show them, poverty and terrorism?’ Such a defeatist and unimaginative approach will not take us far. If we won’t believe in ourselves, who will?

Improvement of ‘fundamentals’ and brand-building are not just interlinked but essentially interdependent. Investing in one area helps improve the other, and therefore both need to be worked upon concomitantly. Several countries in the world have built great country brands in the face of daunting challenges. China, despite the perception of a totalitarian state with scant freedom and persecution of a minority. India, despite several ongoing insurgencies, persecution of minorities, abysmal state of women rights, extreme inequality and an increasingly authoritarian regime founded on fascist values. Turkey, in spite of economic troubles, terrorism, perception of authoritarianism and involvement in conflicts in its region. The UAE, outperforming everyone in the world in brand building, despite the perception of an absolute monarchy with no political rights, exploitation of foreign labour and being a money-laundering hub.

If national brand building is a sine qua non for economic stability and development, then how do we make that happen? While there is a whole lot of literature available on the best practices for building soft power, I would like to put forward the premise that the key to reinvigorating our soft power would be a strategic shift in how we present ourselves to the world within the realm of foreign policy.

We have been consistently projecting ourselves, wittingly or unwittingly, as a security state facing an existential threat – because of being victimized and demonized by India and betrayed by the West. Our mantra is that we have suffered agonizingly while fighting global terrorism to protect the world. Relations with India do constitute a serious security challenge, but how far the betrayal claim is valid has been most aptly addressed by Ambassador Touqir Hussain in his op-eds on Pakistan-US relations. Sadly, instead of helping us in any way, overplaying the victim card, inter alia, has encouraged the West to gradually give up on Pakistan and focus elsewhere.

We may have wished sympathy and support from our international partners in general, and friends in particular, while accentuating our grievances and misgivings, but it has turned out to be wishful thinking. Our depiction of an aggrieved Pakistan facing foreign intrigues and security threats, coupled with our economic woes, has given rise to the unfortunate perception of a basket case, insecure and unstable country at loggerheads with its neighbours, where extremism breeds and terror abounds, and which is desperate to involve others in its troubles. Naturally, the most common reaction is that of distancing (while cozying to India and building more linkages). This is not only true for the Western world but also the ‘brotherly’ countries.

Since long, and in various capacities, I have endeavoured to convey to our policymakers that our foreign policy narrative portrays us as a security state with a victim mindset, keen to involve others in our problems. We are being perceived as trouble-mongers not troubleshooters. What we need instead is to be seen as an emerging economy with great potential for economic partnership.

It is not possible to be a security state and an attractive business destination simultaneously, since entrepreneurs look for secure countries to invest or trade with, not the ones searching for security. At any rate, our single-minded mantra of victimhood was based on a fallacious idea that political and economic diplomacy can work in silos. In practice, the two only function best in sync, otherwise the message becomes a discordant noise.

China under Deng Xiaoping provides perhaps the best example of what we need to do. Leading a country that was seen as a security state fomenting hostility in its region and beyond, a chaotic social order and broken economy – post Mao’s disastrous ‘giant leap forward’ and ‘cultural revolution’ – and a victim mindset bordering on paranoid, Deng chose a brilliant volte-face: projecting a China that desired peace with its neighbours, was keen to build ties with the world – particularly the West – and was totally focused on economic and human development through increased trade and foreign investment for which it had great potential in terms of availability of cheap labour, a huge market and abundant natural resource. The spectacularly successful reinventing of ‘Brand China’ went a long way in attracting the trillions of dollars of trade, foreign investment and tourism that eventually made China an economic superpower.

We need to reinvent Brand Pakistan in a similar way by developing an affirmative narrative that fits our setting. The primary shift needs to be brought about within our foreign policy paradigm. We need to move away from what is seen by many Western analysts as an ‘Indocentric’ and ‘security obsessed’ narrative to a narrative of peace and development.

Our message to the world, through bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, must be in sync with the alternative narrative we wish to develop. Our mantra must be clear, concise and consistent. Unfortunately, I have seen situations where multiple cabinet members and party leaders comment publicly on sensitive foreign policy issues and happenings, endeavouring to outdo each other in sounding more patriotic, but ending up conveying an impression of jingoism, quite contrary to what is intended or required. Diplomacy is a sophisticated art which should be best left to experts.

The writer, an alumnus of UPenn, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown, has worked at the highest echelons of the Pakistan Foreign Service. He tweets/posts @JauharSaleem