Originally Posted by newstudent

Now come to hard facts, in case of complete breakdown in relations with the USA and also for that matter the Europe.

1. Pakistan pays a whooping 670 billion Rs annually for its domestic debt, while only 70 billion Rs for international debt. Govt. can reduce its domestic expenditure by cutting down the payments to its own people.

Questions #1 is "Can our people digest this?"

2. We mainly rely on USA and west for international trade.

Question #2 is "Can we and our industries live without those huge markets for their products?"

3. We do huge defence expenditure and also need modern weaponry from USA.

Question #3 is "Can we live without US support in weapons procurement and also can we reduce our defence expenditure given our situation?" ( I hope you may know that chinese weapons are good but are not much advanced as american weaponry and also by the way chinese are good with us but not good enough in terms of money matters)

4. We need foreign exchange to import oil from Middle East, if we don't have much foreign exchange then

question #4 is "Can we live without oil imports for indefinate period? ( I assume that arab sheikhs will give us some 'khairat" like they did after 1998 nuclear explosions, but for how long? )

5. We are much reliant on the remittances, in case of complete break down in the relations, USA may stop Pakistani migrants sending us the money.

Question #5 is "Can we survive without these remittances?"

6. We have been nurturing our white elephants called PIA, WAPDA, KESC, Steel Mills and so forth. These elephants are hugely subsidized.

Questions #6 is "Can we continue living with these white elephants the the way they
are?"

7. Our people dont pay personal taxes, you may all know that we have one of the lowest tax to GDP ratio. The low tax collection is one of the main reason on our foreign reliance.

Questions #7 is "Can we live with this meager amount of tax if we say bye bye to USA?"

Please do think over it.